The preceding election had seen Dalton receive 45 percent of Virginia's limited electorate, which was the most any GOP nominee had garnered since
1885 when large numbers of
subsequently disenfranchised blacks and poor whites remained enfranchised. This alongside the election of three Representatives
in 1952 produced expectations of a continued GOP rise in Virginia. As early as 1950, sitting Attorney-General
Lindsay Almond had helped eight black students led by Irving Linwood Peddrew III integrate
Virginia Polytechnic Institute, which suggested that the state would be able to navigate the emerging Civil Rights movement reasonably well.
Brown v. Board of Education Governor Stanley did not wish to defy the federal courts against 1954's landmark
Brown v. Board of Education. but did urge black leaders to not press for compliance. However, a year of black pressure caused the white masses to protest demanding that integration be resisted much more vigorously, something
Senator Byrd and
his ruling machine had always urged. Polls carried out by the state's highest-circulation newspaper, the
Richmond Times-Dispatch, in 1956 showed that 92 percent of white Virginians supported segregation and only six percent opposed. A referendum in January 1956, in which turnout of registered voters was extremely low in the whitest parts of the state, voted 304 thousand to 144 thousand in favour of a constitutional convention with the explicit goal of maintaining segregated schools, and in August Stanley presented a package of legislation that mandated closing any public school under a Federal desegregation order, which passed the legislature under a tide of "segregationist emotionalism". This severely divided and weakened the emerging Republican opposition to the
Byrd Organization, and also progressive state Democrats. Virginia was one of seven states whose entire Congressional delegation had signed the "
Southern Manifesto" in March. == Democratic nomination ==