Financial conditions in Virginia during Byrd's youth conditioned his thinking on fiscal matters and "pay-as-you-go" financial policies. Byrd was vehemently opposed to racial desegregation of the public schools, and was leader of "massive resistance", a campaign of opposition to the U.S. Supreme Court decisions in "Brown v. Board of Education" that led to closure of some public schools in Virginia in the 1950s. Students who were denied their education in several Virginia counties became known as the "lost generation." According to Clarence M. Dunnaville Jr., Byrd was a racist and avowed white separatist. Although paying his black and white workers similarly, Byrd was vehemently opposed to racial desegregation even early in the New Deal, and later opposed Presidents Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy despite them also being Democrats (as well as losing Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson) because they opposed racial discrimination within the federal workforce. The Byrd Organization also benefitted from limiting the political participation of blacks and poor whites in Virginia by means of poll taxes and literacy tests, but managed to crush opposition ranging from New Deal Governor James H. Price to gubernatorial and senatorial candidate Francis Pickens Miller. Although Byrd never announced as a presidential candidate, he received many votes in the 1956 presidential election and 15 electoral votes in the 1960 election.