Edward Lebbaeus Breeden (28 January 1905–1 June 1990), member of the House of Delegates and member of the Senate of Virginia, was born in Norfolk, the son of Edward Lebbaeus Breeden, a general contractor, and Cora Lee McCloud Breeden. He attended public schools in Norfolk, spent the academic year 1922–1923 at Hampden-Sydney College, and studied law at George Washington University from 1924 to 1925 but did not receive a degree. Breeden returned to Norfolk and served as deputy clerk of the Norfolk City Circuit Court from 1926 to 1930. He passed the bar in 1927 and entered private practice in 1930. On 8 September 1928 he married Billye Holland. They had one son and one daughter.
In 1935 Breeden won election to the first of four two-year terms in the House of Delegates. During his eight years representing the city of Norfolk in the House he served on the Committees on Asylums and Prisons, on Counties, Cities, and Towns, and on Enrolled Bills. During his first term he belonged to the Committee on the Chesapeake and Its Tributaries, and after his first term he sat on the powerful Committee on Appropriations. Breeden became a member of the Virginia Advisory Legislative Council in 1942 and served until 1945, at which time he was the chair. He was chief patron in 1942 of the bill creating the Elizabeth River Tunnel Commission to direct construction of a bridge and tunnel that opened in 1952, linking Norfolk and Portsmouth by road. Breeden later supported a bond issue that financed a second tunnel between the two cities. It opened in 1962.
In 1943 Breeden was elected to the first of seven four-year terms representing Norfolk in the Senate of Virginia. He served on the Committee on Courts of Justice for twenty-eight years and was its ranking member from 1956 through 1970. Breeden's other major committee assignments were on the Committee on Finance, Insurance, and Banking, which he chaired after 1964, and the Committee on Rules, the extremely powerful five-member committee of the Senate's most influential members, which he joined in 1954. He also served twice on the Governor's Advisory Board on the Budget. Breeden was copatron in 1950 with Senator Harry Flood Byrd Jr. (b. 1914) of the Byrd Tax Credit Act, which provided that when state tax revenue exceeded expenditures the surplus would be refunded to the taxpayers. Four years later Breeden successfully urged that the legislation be repealed so that revenue could be made available for capital outlay needs. When he retired from the Senate at the end of 1971 he was the senior member of the General Assembly and had himself written or chaired the committees that wrote and published more than two dozen major reports on issues ranging from taxation to commerce and public health.
Breeden ran initially under the auspices of the dominant faction of the Democratic Party, which was loyal to Harry Flood Byrd (1887–1966), but during his long legislative tenure he exhibited a political independence that led to his estrangement from the Byrd organization. Breeden responded more to the desires of his urban constituency than to the conservative party orthodoxy. He opposed the poll tax as a prerequisite to voting, was friendly with leaders of organized labor in his district, and in 1947 voted against Virginia's right-to-work law. Breeden maintained ties with leaders of Norfolk's African American community from the beginning of his political career. In 1959 he served on a legislative commission that recommended adoption of a local option approach as an alternative to the Byrd organization's policy of closing schools as part of its Massive Resistance to court-ordered desegregation of the public schools. In April 1959 Breeden presided over the Senate when it debated as a committee of the whole and by a one-vote margin adopted the commission's recommendations, thereby dealing Massive Resistance a fatal legislative blow.
Toward the end of his legislative career, Breeden moved away from the pay-as-you-go philosophy of the Byrd organization and helped pass the first sales tax bill in Virginia and in 1968 campaigned for passage of an $81 million bond referendum for the construction of higher education and mental health facilities. A vigorous advocate of port development, Breeden chaired the Virginia State Ports Study Commission in 1969 and three years later became a member of the board of commissioners of the Virginia Port Authority.
Breeden's opposition to Massive Resistance as well as a dispute over a judicial appointment in Norfolk produced the most serious electoral challenge of his political career in the 1959 Democratic Party primary. By a margin of only 1,200 votes out of some 22,260 cast Breeden defeated Reid M. Spencer, who was supported by the segregationist Defenders of State Sovereignty and Individual Liberties and during the bitter campaign branded Breeden as an advocate of racial integration. Breeden easily defeated a Republican candidate in the general election. He chaired the Second District Democratic Committee from 1952 to 1960 and supported the party in presidential elections until 1972. Although he considered running for lieutenant governor on several occasions, Breeden never sought statewide office.
A man of prodigious energy, Breeden maintained an active law practice during his years of public service and after his retirement. He received an honorary LL.D. from Hampden-Sydney College in 1973. Following the death of his first wife on 13 November 1964, he married Virginia Hurt Sneed on 16 April 1966. Edward Lebbaeus Breeden died of a stroke in a Norfolk hospital on 1 June 1990 and was buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery in that city.
Sources Consulted:
E. Randolph Trice, comp., The Elks Parade: A Centennial History and Catalogue of Members of Upsilon Chapter of Kappa Sigma [ca. 1983], 52; Record of the Hampden-Sydney Alumni Association (July 1944): 8–9; Edward Lebbaeus Breeden Papers, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville; author's interview with Breeden, 23 Apr. 1973; other information supplied by son Edward L. Breeden III; Norfolk Ledger-Dispatch, 10 Sept. 1928, 3 Jan. 1955; Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, 17 Apr. 1966, 9 Mar. 1971; Richmond Times-Dispatch, 9 Mar., 4 July 1971; political career thoroughly documented in Norfolk newspapers, 1935–1971; obituaries in Norfolk Virginian-Pilot (portrait) and Richmond News Leader, both 2 June 1990, and Richmond Times-Dispatch, 3 June 1990; editorial tribute in Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, 5 June 1990.
1956 Legislative photograph courtesy Visual Studies Collection, Library of Virginia.
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by James R. Sweeney.
How to cite this page:
James R. Sweeney, "Edward Lebbaeus Breeden (1905&ndash1990)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2001 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Breeden_Edward_L, accessed [today's date]).
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