Banks returned to Virginia, in 1935 taking a teaching job in Halifax County, and also served as that nonwhite school's principal.
Shortly after they both returned from their wartime service, Banks agreed to serve as executive director of the NAACP's Virginia chapter, which was the largest in the county.
Senator Harry F. Byrd declared a policy of Massive Resistance to Brown (which led to schools closing in several Virginia Communities and remaining closed for five years in Prince Edward County), two Virginia legislative committees (headed by John B. Boatwright and James M. Thomson) took aim at the NAACP, seeking both to force disclosure of its membership lists (which could lead to retaliation) and to curtail efforts by Banks and others to recruit plaintiffs.
The United States Supreme Court ultimately reversed all those anti-NAACP laws in Scull v. Virginia ex rel.
He was arrested for trespass on October 17, 1961, in Lynchburg, after he sought and was refused service in the "Whites Only" section of the Norfolk and Western Railway Company restaurant.
[1] Banks was also involved in the sit-ins by Virginia Union University students (where Dean Thomas Henderson also supported desegregation efforts).