Robertson served from 1916 to 1922, when he resigned and was replaced by Samuel S. Lambeth Jr. in the February 1923 special session but Robert J. Noell won the election to succeed him later that year.

[3] During World War I, Robertson enlisted and served in the United States Army, but was assigned stateside so he could continue that part-time elective office.

In 1956, Robertson was one of the 19 senators who signed the Southern Manifesto against the U.S. Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), which mandated schools' desegregation.

[4] Asked to comment "on his region's state of mind and any specific American attitudes he feels are necessary to avoid violence and bring healing in a deteriorating situation following the Supreme Court school desegregation order," Robertson stated: Virginia recognizes the correctness of the 1850 decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Court and in the 155 subsequent decisions of State and Federal courts holding that the equal rights provision of a constitution could be properly satisfied by public schools for the white and colored races which are separate but equal.

The worst feature of the current desegregation effort, however, is the resulting bitterness and racial animosities in areas where harmony heretofore prevailed.

Representative Harrison's analysis is lucid and accurate, and I fully endorse the position he has taken in opposition to it.Harrison had stated: Even a casual reading of this bill, sponsored by the President, reveals it as one of the most drastic measures ever to receive consideration by the Congress.

It would set up a Federal Commission with a staff of snoopers who could roam the length and breadth of the United States, armed with subpoenas, looking for civil-rights incidents.