winning civil rights cases based upon federal constitutional challenges. Among these was the case of Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, which was initiated by students to protest poor conditions at R. R. Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia. Their case became part of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision in 1954. That decision overturned Plessy and declared that state laws that established separate public schools for black and white students denied black children equal educational opportunities and were inherently unequal. As a result, de jure (legalized) racial segregation was ruled a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, thereby paving the way for desegregation and the Civil Rights Movement. Gray Commission A little more than a month after the Supreme Court's decision in Brown, on June 26, 1954, Senator Byrd vowed to stop integration attempts in Virginia's schools. By the end of that summer, Governor Thomas B. Stanley, a member of the Byrd Organization, had appointed a Commission on Public Education, consisting of 32 white Democrats and chaired by Virginia Senator Garland "Peck" Gray of rural Sussex County. This became known as the Gray Commission. Before the commission issued its final report on November 11, 1955, the Supreme Court had responded to segregationists' delaying tactics by issuing the Brown II decision and directing federal district judges to implement desegregation "with all deliberate speed." The Gray Plan recommended that the General Assembly pass legislation and allow for amendment of the state constitution so as to repeal Virginia's compulsory school attendance law, to allow the Governor to close schools rather than allow their integration, to establish pupil assignment structures, and finally to provide vouchers to parents who chose to enroll their children in segregated private schools. Virginia voters approved the Gray Plan Amendment on January 9, 1956. 1956: Circumventing Brown via the Stanley Plan On February 24, 1956, Byrd declared a campaign which became known as "massive resistance" to avoid implementing public school integration in Virginia. Leading the state's conservative Democrats, he proclaimed "If we can organize the Southern States for massive resistance to this order I think that in time the rest of the country will realize that racial integration is not going to be accepted in the South." Within a month, Senator Byrd and 100 other conservative Southern politicians signed what became known as the "Southern Manifesto", condemning the