THIS DAY IN VIRGINIA HISTORY
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December 02, 1955
Robert Leon Bacon Wrote to Governor Thomas B. Stanley
v. Board of Education of Topeka
decision by the U.S. Supreme Court outlawing segregation and Virginia's policy of active defiance of the ruling, known as Massive Resistance, prompted many individual citizens to send letters and petitions to elected officials. In his letter to Governor Thomas B. Stanley (1890–1970), Robert Leon Bacon, an African American, described the hardships of living under segregation. He wrote that "Virginia is the home of presidents but it is not the home of democracy." Bacon vowed to leave the South, promising to tell northerners about his experiences in Virginia.