In 1958, a group of Virginia businessmen informally organized for the purpose of promoting industrial development in the state. Their first order of business, however, was to convince Governor Almond to keep the public school system open, and to abandon massive resistance to school desegregation. They reasoned that businesses were unlikely to move to a state without public schools.
Hunton & Williams business attorney and Richmond School Board Chairman, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., was one of these men, and the portion of his papers documenting the operation of this group is now available online. Included here is correspondence, memoranda and printed materials from 1958-1964.
In 1978, when Justice Powell was serving on the Supreme Court, he convinced one of the founders of the Group, Stuart Saunders, former President of the Norfolk and Western Railroad (and later Chairman of the ill-fated Penn Central Railroad), to write an informal history of the organization. That document is included here, as well.