Linwood Holton, who died last week, was governor of Virginia in 1970 when the courts ordered the city of Richmond to use busing to integrate the public schools. This was the time of “massive resistance,” when many white parents sent their kids to all-white private schools. To illustrate the lengths to which some whites would go to in order to prevent integration, the schools in Prince Edward County, Virginia, shut down for five years.
On the court order Gov. Holton said “It’s always hard for a child to change schools. They don’t want to leave old friends. But my children go where they are assigned.”
A photograph of him accompanying his 13-year-old daughter to her new integrated high school ran in papers across the country.
Holton was a Republican.
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