©2017 Sarah Becker The Sounds of Silence In 1966 Simon & Garfunkel had a number one song, President Lyndon B. Johnson created the U.S. Department of Transportation, and U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr. (D-VA) died at his Berryville home. The Byrd machine passed politically from father to son, Johnson appointed the first black U.S. Cabinet member, and U.S. Senator Willis Robertson (D-VA) lost Presidential favor. Virginia’s failure to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown decision, Byrd Sr.’s co-authorship of the Southern Manifesto left many Civil Rights issues unresolved. “We regard the decision of the Supreme Court in the [bundled] school cases as a clear abuse of judicial power,” the Manifesto said. “It climaxes a trend in the Federal Judiciary undertaking to legislate…to encroach upon the reserved rights of the States and the people.” Virginia massively resisted Brown. In Alexandria, in 1966, the subject was integration of the all-white Thomas Jefferson Middle School. If integrated, the re-fashioned school, located at Cameron and N. West Streets, “would draw from nearby census tracts designated as ‘poverty stricken.’” The Rosemont neighborhood protested and the building was torn down. “Alexandria quietly is making plans for a model community-centered facility to replace its least integrated elementary school, Charles Houston,” The Washington Post reported in January 1968. “But present indications are that the new Jefferson-Houston Elementary School [K-5] will be as segregated as the old one.” “The new building is now on the drawing boards and expected to open in 1969,” The Post continued. It could provide an opportunity for the city to redraw attendance boundaries and promote integration, if it chooses…[but]…Alexandria school authorities have no plans to cross the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad tracts that have been the traditional boundary between the city’s Negro district and white, middle-class neighborhoods [like…