• Date: January 28, 1959
• Creator: Commission on Education
• Archive: Senate Document No. 2, Extra Session 1959, House and Senate Documents, 1959, Commonwealth of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia

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Description

Lindsay Almond appointed The Perrow Commission on February 5, 1959 after federal and state courts had struck down the massive resistance laws. The Commission's charge was to make recommendations by March 31, 1959 for methods to safeguard segregated schools to the maximum extent possible. Unlike the heavily rural and Southside-heavy Gray Commission in 1955, the Perrow Commission was balanced with four representatives from each Congressional district. Mosby G. Perrow, Jr., from Lynchburg had served in the Virginia legislature since 1944 and chaired the commission. The Commission developed what was described as a containment policy, designed to hold school desegregation to the lowest level possible. Tuition grants, local compulsory attendance laws, and a new pupil placement law combined with a "freedom-of-choice" approach to continue resistance to integration by means other than outright racially-based defiance.