 Like Boothe, Mosby Perrow Jr. and Tayloe Murphy, Cochran advocated keeping schools open during Virginia's "Massive Resistance," whereby U.S.Senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr. vowed to prevent public school desegregation after the "Brown v. Board of Education" Supreme Court decisions.After January 19, 1959, when both a three-judge federal panel and the Virginia Supreme Court declared the Stanley plan of various laws adopted in a special 1956 legislative session unconstitutional, Governor J. Lindsay Almond Jr. and Lieutenant Governor Gi Stephens broke with the Byrd Organization's decision to continue Massive Resistance.