Robert C. Byrd

The 1954 decision of the Supreme Court ruled that children could not be assigned to public schools on the basis of race or color. It did not require forced integration, massive or otherwise.

People like to choose their own associates, and they have a right to choose their own associates. I am against forced segregation. But I am also against forced integration.

I am opposed to busing children around like cattle and treating them like guinea pigs in an utterly foolish social experiment which, in the long run, will not only create more racial unrest, but will also greatly impair the public school…

Politicians and Federal judges and Federal bureaucrats can afford to send their own children to private schools or live in white suburbia, but in order to make political hay they vote for forced integration for everybody else's children…

Quality education must not be sacrificed to the golden calf of forced integration.

I speak as a Senator who is opposed to forced segregation. I speak as a Senator who is opposed to forced integration.

Merely rubbing elbows with a white child will not equip a black child to grow up as a breadwinner for a family.

It is far more important that black children be taught to read and write and add and subtract than to be hauled like guinea pigs out of their own neighborhoods and away to a strange school only that they may look into white faces.

To forbid forced segregation is not to bring about forced integration; and to bring about forced integration, North or South, is certainly a formidable undertaking.

We all are impatient that we cannot, overnight, push a mighty button and see all our problems disappear.

Organized crime is just as great a threat to the well-being of our Nation as are the continued upsurge of street violence and the work of militants who seek to burn down our cities or destroy our educational institutions.

The issue of the Vietnam war is an extremely emotional one which has divided much of our society. There has been widespread uncertainty from the beginning over whether we should have gotten involved and whether we should stay.

I gave no encouragement to the October 15 moratorium. I expressed concern that it might undercut our Government's efforts to negotiate an honorable peace in South Vietnam.

From the beginning we have fought this war with one hand tied behind our back. We should have hit the enemy with all of our conventional power. We should have destroyed his dikes, closed his ports, and forced him to negotiate in good faith.

I am against saddling the hard-pressed taxpayer with this heavy burden while the Federal Government continues to spend and spend and spend. It is not right to take extra money away from the people and then pump it into questionable…

In other words, we are told that we must have the surtax to fight inflation. What it amounts to is simply that we will collect more money to fight inflation, and we will spend more money to feed inflation.

Commercially feasible ways of converting coal to oil and gas must be developed as insurance against a long-term decline in oil and gas reserves.

I have never trusted the Soviet Union. I believe that the leaders in the Soviet Union can only be depended upon to keep an agreement so long as to do so is in their own best interests.

The troublemakers, despite their widespread activities, form only a minority. The vast majority of students-and the vast majority of parents, and teachers, and school administrators-still believe in America. Most students still want an…

I believe in equal opportunity for all citizens. I believe in equal protection under the law for all citizens. But I also believe in equal responsibility and accountability under the law for all citizens.

I believe in equal justice for all citizens of this country, regardless of race, or creed, or color. But I do not believe that social justice and law and order are incompatible or mutually exclusive, one of the other. We can and should…

I call for a return to a basic principle upon which any civilized country must, in the final analysis, rest-the rule of law.

Yes, accord the criminal his constitutional rights. Accord him his constitutional rights, but let us not forget about the rights of innocent victims.

I say to the President of the United States, whoever he is or may be: "Look at your Supreme Court. Look at your appointees. If you want really to do something about crime, start there."

It is time for this Nation's Capital to quit temporizing with criminals.