Many times in African American history, whenever major victories for rights were won through supreme court, the states would find ways to undermine these rulings and keep society from progressing. In this case, the governor was trying to get around the ruling of Brown VS. Board, which ruled segregation in public schools unconstitutional. Giving tuition grants to white parents who would not want to have their kids attend integrated schools would allow them to attend legally segregated private schools. Many southern government officials, including the governor, were willing to fight integration even if it was considered unconstitutional by the highest court in the nation. This defiance of national laws has happened multiple times throughout history when concerning African Americans. An example of these actions of defiance were the Black Codes that were enacted in the south. These laws, such as poll taxes, were meant to stop blacks from voting because many of them were poor. Convict leasing, another part of the Black Codes, was another way of forcing negroes back into slave labor. Both slavery and segregation were a key part of southern culture. History shows when the supreme court ruled against African American aspects of life that were a big part of southern culture, the states always found a way to work around the ruling though state laws for as long as possible. The only way that Africans Americans could have forced compliance with the supreme court ruling was to fight the southern states politically, like Dr. John H. Marion and the Virginia council of Human Relations did.

A characteristic of whites in the south, including Virginia, that impaired their ability to make logical decisions regarding their tax contribution was their lack of education. A survey conducted by The Catholic Digest in June 1956, only six months after the events of the Virginia Legislatures meetings, on the relationship between level of education and support for segregation in the white American population (unbiased to religious affiliation), found that “among Southern whites with eight grades or less, 87 per cent wanted segregation, while 54 per cent of Southern whites with college educations favored it.” This meant that approximately 30 percent of whites developed a new stance on segregation following higher education. This statistic revealed that whites in the south who had a higher level of education understood politics better, and had a clearer outlook on segregation and how it affected them. This allowed them to form an educated stance on segregation in schools between whites and negroes. 

In Virginia, the presence of uneducated whites meant that impulsive decisions were made regarding the Supreme Court’s ruling on segregation, which caused whites to stop giving their tax money to the public education sector. The whites in Virginia thought that by keeping their tax money, they would prevent the integration of negro students into their schools, and they would successfully undermine the demands of the federal government. However, their lack of knowledge of the public education system was a detriment to their cause, as the decision to stop paying taxes would destroy public education for whites as well, leaving private schools to carry the burden of the student population. Unfortunately, white Virginians were influenced by customs and other white Virginians, rather than logic and knowledge, which caused them to ignore this.

This incidence of white Virginians withholding their taxes was a result of Virginia wanting to maintain power over segregation within the state. Virginia was attempting to undermine the ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court and weave its way into an education system that continued to favor whites while still “complying” with federal laws. Still, education in Virginia would suffer if the actions of those whites who were uneducated on the matter chose to punish public education, rather than support private education.