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Governor J. Lindsay Almond Inauguration Speech
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Governor Almond's speech described a difference between states' rights and what he
called "states' responsibilities." Almond considered the federal union a "compact"
between the states and that nothing in American history, not even the "tragic" Civil
War, had changed these fundamental principles. Almond rested the South's position on
desegregation on "these plain and unequivocal facts of history" and called for the South
to educate the rest of the United States about this history. Virginians, Almond claimed,
faced "an ever deepending constitutional crisis." "No public school can function at the
point of a bayonet," Almond proclaimed. "Integration anywhere means destruction
everywhere," Almond reiterated. Almond's speech drew the conflict over integration in
public schools as part of a broader constitutional crisis, one that threatened the
foundations of the republic in the face of the everpresent Soviet Communist threat. In
this speech Almond used Cold War rhetoric, mentioning Sputnik and condemning what he saw
as growing "collectivist" tendencies in American government.
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About the film
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This film is indexed under the following terms:
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Copyright William G. Thomas, III and Rector and Board of Visitors, University of Virginia.
All Rights Reserved. 2005. No film, image, or text on this site may be reproduced, copied, or duplicated for, any purpose whatsoever, without the express written permission from the rights holders. See our copyright statement. |
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