A lifelong Democrat, Boothe helped lead his party's progressive faction, particularly as they opposed the Byrd Organization's policy of Massive Resistance to racial integration in Virginia's public schools.
[3] Boothe was classified as a "militant moderate" or "Young Turk", one of a group challenging the Byrd Organization of conservative, mainly rural Democrats led by U.S.
[1] In 1950 he introduced bills to create a state civil rights commission and repeal laws segregating transportation.
[1] After the United States Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education (and companion cases including one from Prince Edward County, Virginia) in 1954, racial integration became likely.
On January 4, 1956, he and Arlington School Board president Elizabeth Campbell went to Richmond to debate segregation and the Gray plan with Dowell Howard and Henry T.
Moreover, Byrd forces in the state Senate retaliated against Bootheby giving him two minor committee assignments, neither important, which some considered a way of isolating him.
[9] Arlington voters had rejected the proposed constitutional amendment, but it passed statewide, so that when federal judge Albert Bryan ordered those schools integrated, the Stanley administration had ousted Campbell and the rest of Arlington's elected school board and imposed the racially segregated pupil placement plan.
The new governor J. Lindsay Almond initially protested vehemently, but a month later broke with the Byrd Organization and allowed the public schools in Norfolk and Arlington to remain open and integrate peacefully pursuant to federal court orders.
Boothe handily won reelection in 1959 despite a primary challenge for allowing such integration (as did segregationist James Thomson, who had succeeded him as Alexandria's delegate).
[1] After that loss, Boothe retired from the electoral arena, although he remained politically active until ultimately sidelined by Alzheimer's disease.
The City of Alexandria named a newly created park in the Cameron Station subdivision after Armistead Boothe in 1999.