Six years later, World War II erupted, and Cochran served in the U.S. Navy, mostly in the Pacific from 1942 until 1946, as he refused desk and legal jobs and sought those involving amphibious service.

Cochran won election unopposed to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1947, representing Augusta and Highland counties and the cities of Staunton and Waynesboro.

In the General Assembly, Cochran had been one of the "Young Turks," World War II veterans who disagreed with the Byrd Organization on many education and civil rights issues, although he was not as liberal as Armistead Boothe of Alexandria.

They introduced measures to abolish Jim Crow laws and the poll tax, which didn't pass until much later; and the Organization retaliated by limiting their committee assignments.

Like Boothe, Mosby Perrow Jr. and Tayloe Murphy, Cochran advocated keeping schools open during Virginia's "Massive Resistance," whereby U.S.

Senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr. vowed to prevent public school desegregation after the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decisions.

After January 19, 1959, when both a three-judge federal panel and the Virginia Supreme Court declared the Stanley Plan of various laws adopted in a special 1956 legislative session unconstitutional, Governor J. Lindsay Almond and Lieutenant Governor Gi Stephens broke with the Byrd Organization's decision to continue Massive Resistance.

They narrowly secured legislative approval of a commission chaired by Senator Perrow to craft the Commonwealth's response to "Brown II."

"[7] Cochran later took pride in helping to convince Governor Mills E. Godwin, another leader of Massive Resistance, to support creation of Virginia's community college system.

From the list of attorneys suggested by the Virginia Bar Association, Godwin nominated Cochran to fill the other vacant seat.