Moral Victory

Over much of Virginia, if we read yesterday's election returns correctly, the issue of school integration no longer is the flaming fire that once threatened to consume this Old Dominion. Yesterday was Moderation Day.

So wrote Editor James Jackson Kilpatrick of the Richmond News-Leader, once one of Dixie's hottest massive-resistance defenders, after last week's primary races for the 140 state legislature seats (132 Democratic). Like most politicians, Editor "Kilpo" read the results as a considerable victory for Governor J. Lindsay Almond Jr. and his moderate school program. Politicians also saw in the results a personal comedown for the segregationist patriarch of state Democrats, U.S. Senator Harry Flood Byrd.

In round numbers, Almond's new coalition of moderates netted only two additional senate seats, lost about three house seats. But by a peculiar gentlemen's understanding of gentlemanly Virginia politics, the segregation-moderation issue was sharply tested in three critical senate seats that the opposition tried to take by every trick in white supremacy's bag. Almond-backing moderates won them so handily that the diehards could hardly believe the vote ("Good God! Are you sure?").

The test came in the just-integrated Washington suburb of Alexandria (pop. 62,000). where Lawyer Armistead L. Boothe, 51, Virginia-born and Oxford-educated, held his senate seat against the combined forces of Virginia-style citizens' councils and all that the Byrd forces could throw against him. Byrd and Son Harry Jr., 44-year-old state senator, personally made calls and wrote letters for the candidacy of their cousin, Marshall J. Beverley, whose savage (for Virginia) campaign was managed by Harry Jr.'s brother-in-law, James M. Thomson. Almond maintained the fiction that he was not involved in the campaign, but managed to make it apparent where he stood. Boothe beat Beverley by nearly two to one.

Thus by the time-honored signals of the Old Dominion, Almond gained not by statistics, but because moderation had scored in open contest against the worst the diehards could do. Come next session of the legislature, the narrow majorities by which the moderate school program squeaked through last April will probably be enlarged by the votes of legislators who once were simply afraid to vote for any bill that might stir up Byrd's anger.

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