David J. Mays

Who was David J. Mays?

David John Mays was an American lawyer and writer.

He won a 1953 Pulitzer Prize for Edmund Pendleton 1721-1803, a biography of the late 18th-century Governor of Virginia Edmund Pendleton. Mays also edited two volumes of Pendleton's letters and papers.

The Virginia Bar Association elected Mays its president for the 1958-1959 term.

Mays became known for participating in the strategy called Massive resistance to the United States Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education which forbade racial segregation in public schools. As a member of the Gray Commission, Mays helped draft the Stanley plan, which the Virginia legislature passed in September 1956 and Governor Thomas B. Stanley signed into law. A federal court struck down part of the plan in January 1960, and federal and state courts struck down all major elements by 1960. Mays helped write the legal briefs in Harrison v. NAACP, NAACP v. Button and Hughes v. WMCA. In 1959, Mays addressed a sub-committee of the US Senate on A Question of Intent: The States, their Schools and the 14th Amendment.