He introduced much of the segregationist legislation and was vice-chairman of the Boatwright Committee which investigated the NAACP for litigating on behalf of civil rights, before being defeated in the 1959 Democratic primary.
Beverly Fitzpatrick followed in his elder brother's footsteps at Jefferson High School and Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia and in becoming a lawyer, but served in the U.S. Navy during World War II and became a judge.
In 1937 Fitzpatrick and Walter H. Scott won election to the Virginia General Assembly as the two delegates allotted Roanoke.
When District 36 was created in 1943 to cover the City of Roanoke, Muse had been elected to the seat, but Fitzpatrick denied him re-election four years later, and he was appointed to the Virginia School Board.
As part of Massive Resistance, the Virginia General Assembly passed the Stanley Plan in September 1956, which included provisions for pupil placement boards, as well as to close any school that integrated, even pursuant to a court order.
However, the quality of those facilities was worse than those for white children, with some schools overcrowded, some heated only by wood stoves and/or lacking indoor plumbing as well as cafeterias and auditoriums.
In January 1956 over NAACP opposition, Virginia's voters approved an amendment to the state constitution which allowed tuition grants to private schools (which became known as segregation academies).
In March 1957, the Boatwright Committee opined that various segregationist organizations did not commit the newly expanded legal offenses of champerty, maintenance, barratry, running and capping, nor the unauthorized practice of law.
Two years later (after Fitzpatrick's defeat in the Democratic primary and with Stone remaining on the committee after his elevation to the Senate) the commission issued another report, that complained that the Virginia State Bar was not punishing those lawyers but instead spending $5000 on a Jamestown commemoration and $6350 on a new continuing legal education program.
Hopkins won re-election numerous times, and later led a commission to reorganize and modernize Virginia's state government.
In January 1963, the U. S. Supreme Court in NAACP v. Button (1963), by a 6 to 3 majority struck down the remainder of the Stanley Plan's revised legal ethics laws.
From 1965 until 1973, as the Byrd Organization disintegrated, Fitzpatrick represented the Salem District on the Virginia Highway Department Board, replacing S. Sutton Flythe of Martinsville.