The Commission on Education, known as the Perrow Commission after its chairman, Virginia state senator Mosby Perrow Jr., was a 40-member commission established by Governor of Virginia J. Lindsay Almond on February 5, 1959, after the Virginia Supreme Court in Harrison v. Day and a three-judge federal court in James v. Almond had both struck down significant portions of the Stanley Plan, which had implemented Massive Resistance to the U.S. Supreme Court decisions in Brown v. Board of Education issued on May 17, 1954, and May 31, 1955.
[2] Governor Almond instructed the Commission to prepare a report by the end of the legislative session on March 31, 1959.
On the eve of the state Senate's vote on adopting the Perrow Commissions' recommendations, 5000 people (mostly from Southside Virginia) gathered in Richmond's Capital Square to condemn Governor Almond and Lieutenant Governor Stephens for supporting the Perrow Commission's recommendations, rather than fight on.
"[8] The Senate's passage of the "local option" helped trigger the seemingly-inevitable decline and fall of Massive Resistance, but Perrow paid a political price.
[9] Legal challenges to the remains of Massive Resistance continued, and in 1963, Virginia lost NAACP v. Button.
In April 1965, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare issued guidelines that required all school districts to file compliance documents by July.
With increased funding as an incentive, all but 5 of Virginia's 130 school districts had filed desegregation plans and documentation concerning compliance by April 1965.
Arguing on behalf of the NAACP and representing black parents, Samuel W. Tucker used statistics to show that the county's plan was no more than segregation by another name 14 years after Brown.