Virginia's Story (from Reconstruction to Virginia's Civil Rights History
Within the span of one hundred years from the end of the U.S. Civil War to the passage of the Voting Rights Act, Virginia existed with its imperfections and fights for justice. It experienced the paradox of being a state with massive historical developments and the existence of massive, unjust oppression. After the brutal Civil War, the landscape of Virginia was free from legalized slavery. That was great news. Reconstruction was birthed with HBCUs growing and the continued fight for equal rights among black Americans. Native Americans were in the state too. While Reconstruction saw some progress, the racist backlash ended Reconstruction completely. After Reconstruction, Jim Crow ruled the state government. Jim Crow was basically state-sponsored oppression that used poll tax, discrimination, and terrorism against black people in Virginia plus in America. Railroad and industrial technology grew in cities and towns. New institutions and educational system transformed the state of Virginia in enumerable ways. The time between World War One and World War Two saw more industries being constructed and social movements in abundance. Cities like Norfolk, Richmond, Hampton, etc. came into further cultural development. The NAACP and other civil rights groups used great sacrifice in defending the rights of black Virginians. The Civil Rights Movement in Virginia wasn't made up of one person. It was a history that included a collection of dedicated heroic, men and women including children who desired freedom for all people. From the courageous actions of Evelyn Butts to Irene Morgan, Virginia was one large epicenter of the Civil Rights Movement. Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. both visited Norfolk, Virginia before. Malcolm X traveled into Norfolk in 1963, and Dr. King visited Norfolk (at the Calvary Baptist Church) in 1966. Ella Baker was born in Virginia, and she was one of the greatest civil rights leaders in human history. Despite efforts from the reactionary Byrd Organization to stop civil rights progressive activism, new laws that demanded racial justice existed. Likewise, we have another paradox of racial progress, but we witness still racism, discrimination, economic deprivation, police brutality, and evil other evils like yesteryear. This is why we can't be complacent or naive. The fight for freedom continues in 2019. This section of Virginia's story will deal with Virginia's history from Reconstruction to the Civil Rights Movement of Virginia. The struggle continues, but victory is ours.
Reconstruction
From the era of Reconstruction to the time of World War 1, Virginia experienced monumental changes. Black Americans were now free from overt legalized slavery after the American Civil War. History was made in Reconstruction from Congressional seats earned by African Americans to new laws protecting the rights of black Americans. Yet, the white racist backlash in Virginia would cause Jim Crow, racist, terroristic violence against black people, and other forms of discriminatory policies. Industrialization grew in Virginia during this time, and reality set in that Virginia would exist without West Virginia forever. The end of this Reconstruction era saw a nightmare for many Virginia, while the privileged wealthy elites gained a large amount of financial power. African Americans formed the Colored Monitor Union Club to fight for the rights of citizenship for black Americans. It was created on April 4, 1865. Black people in Hampton founded a Union League in March 1865, and Williamsburg residents founded a Colored Union League in May. Richmond leaders did the same on May 9, 1865 to create the Colored Men’s Equal Rights League of Richmond, which was an affiliate of the National Equal Rights League (that existed on 1864). Black men fought for the right to vote as north as Alexandria, Virginia too. In Virginia, sharecropping was commonplace. This was when freedmen, who were black people, and poor white farmers rented lands from landowners by promising to pay the owners with a share of the crops. The problem was that landowners didn’t pay the workers sufficient money, and some landowners lied about contracts. This resulted in massive economic exploitation.
Virginia during Reconstruction saw devastation as a product of the U.S. Civil War. The Confederacy was defeated once and for all. That was great. Also, Virginian infrastructure was in ruins (like railroads, roads, buildings, and farmland). Plantations were burned out. Many people were without homes and without jobs or foods. Supplies were scared. That is why the Union Army came into Virginia to help reconstruct the state. The Freedmen’s Bureau helped to newly freed African Americans. Many black people learned to read, had educational services, and other means of developing their own lives. African American men and women lobbied to have full rights as citizens. In Norfolk, VA by May of 1865, some black men cast their votes for the first time. Local electoral boards refused to count them. Their votes were counted by the time of the Constitutional Convention of 1867-1868. They elected African Americans. Some black Americans were elected to the General Assembly in 1869, mostly as Republicans and later as part of the biracial Readjuster Party. Black politicians advocated civil rights, access to free public school, and a financial reform of the state’s large antebellum debt. African American women were leaders in the fight for black civil rights as well.
The historian Mary Farmer-Kaiser reported that white landowners lied and said that freedwomen were lazy and were unwilling to work in the fields. They wanted the Bureau to force them to sign labor contracts. Later, many Bureau officials condemned the withdrawal of freedwomen from work force as well as husbands who allowed it. The truth is that freedwomen have every right to decide for themselves their own destinies period. While the Bureau did not force freedwomen to work, it did force freedmen to work or be arrested as vagrants. Furthermore, agents urged poor unmarried mothers to give their older children up as apprentices to work for white landowners. Farmer-Kaiser concludes that "Freedwomen found both an ally and an enemy in the bureau." Virginia saw Reconstruction in three phases. They were: wartime, presidential, and congressional. Immediately after the war, President Andrew Johnson recognized the Francis Harrison Pierpont government as legitimate and restored local government. The Virginia legislature passed the Black Codes. The Black Codes restricted the Freedmen’s mobility and rights. Black people had only limited rights, and were not considered citizens. Black people couldn’t vote in 1865. The state ratified the 13th Amendment to abolish slavery. They revoked the 1861 ordinance of secession. Johnson believed that Reconstruction was complete, which was a lie. Other Republicans in Congress refused to seat the newly elected state delegation; the Radicals wanted better evidence that slavery and similar methods of serfdom had been abolished, and that black Americans ought to be given equal rights. They also were concerned that Virginia leaders had not renounced Confederate nationalism.
After winning large majorities in the 1866 national election, the Radical Republicans gained power in Congress. They put Virginia (and nine other ex-Confederate states) under military rule. Virginia was administered as the "First Military District" in 1867–69 under General John Schofield. Meanwhile, the Freedmen became politically active by joining the pro-Republican Union League, holding conventions, and demanding universal male suffrage and equal treatment under the law, as well as demanding disfranchisement of ex-Confederates and the seizure of their plantations. Schofield was criticized by the conservative whites for supporting the Radical Republican cause. He was criticized by Radical Republicans for thinking that black suffrage was premature. There were splits in the Republican Party. The moderates existed. The other progressive Republicans wanted to disfranchise a person if he was a private in the Confederate army or had sold food to the Confederate government. They wanted land reform. About 20,000 former Confederates were denied the right to vote in the 1867 election.
In 1867, Radical Republican James Hunnicutt (1814–1880), a white preacher, editor and Scalawag (or white Southerners supporting Reconstruction) mobilized the black Republican vote by calling for the confiscation of all plantations and turning the land over to Freedmen and poor whites. The moderate Republicans, led by former Whigs, businessmen and planters, while supportive of black suffrage, drew the line at property confiscation. A compromise was reached calling for confiscation if the planters tried to intimidate black voters. Hunnicutt's coalition took control of the Republican Party, and began to demand the permanent disfranchisement of all whites who had supported the Confederacy. The Virginia Republican party became permanently split, and many moderate Republicans switched to the opposition "Conservatives.” The Radical Republicans won the 1867 election for delegates to a constitutional convention. The 1868 constitutional convention included 33 white Conservatives, and 72 Radicals (of whom 24 were Black Americans, 23 Scalawag, and 21 Carpetbaggers) It was called the "Underwood Constitution" after the presiding officer, the main accomplishment was to reform the tax system, and create a system of free public schools for the first time in Virginia. After heated debates over disfranchising Confederates, the Virginia legislature approved a Constitution that excluded ex-Confederates from holding office, but allowed them to vote in state and federal elections.
Under pressure from national Republicans to be more moderate, General Schofield continued to administer the state through the Army. He appointed a personal friend, Henry H. Wells as provisional governor. Wells was a Carpetbagger and a former Union general. Schofield and Wells fought and defeated Hunnicutt and the Scalawag Republicans. They took away contracts for state printing orders from Hunnicutt's newspaper. The national government ordered elections in 1869 that included a vote on the new Underwood constitution, a separate one on its two disfranchisement clauses that would have permanently stripped the vote from most former rebels, and a separate vote for state officials. The Army enrolled the Freedmen (ex-slaves) as voters but would not allow some 20,000 prominent whites to vote or hold office. The Republicans nominated Wells for governor, as Hunnicutt and most Scalawags went over to the opposition. The moderate Republicans were headed by the ex-Confederate William Mahone. He was once a Confederate general. He wanted Conservatives to win races. He worked with some ex-Democrats and others to form the Conservative Party. He wanted to allow ex-Confederates to vote. Later, there was the new legislature that ratified the 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Virginia saw the end to Reconstruction by January of 1870. The Radical Republicans were ousted. Virginia was the only southern state that did not elect a civilian government that represented more Radical Republican principles. Many people had a hard time to adjust to new realities. The Radical Republicans were defeated because of the massive racism of white citizens and the resistance to true black liberation. People couldn’t stand former slaves being in positions of political power. The all-white Constitutional Convention of 1901-1902 destroyed African American political activity in Virginia for decades. It ended democratic reforms in the black community. It reintroduced the poll tax. Black voters reduced their numbers as voters in Virginia as a product of these draconian measures. Republican voters fell to 35 percent of voters in 1904. The Democrats back then were dominated by white supremacists who dominated both houses of the General Assembly.
By the late 19th century with the Gilded Age, railroad and industrial growth was common in Virginia. New railroads continued to be developed after the Civil War. Collis P. Huntington was a railroad baron who in 1868 allowed the Virginia Central Railroad to be merged and transformed into the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad. By 1870, many railroads were merged to form the Atlantic, Mississippi, and Ohio Railroad later to be renamed Norfolk and Western. The towpath of the now defunct James River and Kanawha canal was transformed into the Richmond and Allegheny Railroad. Within a decade, it would merge into the Chesapeake and Ohio. Other railroads would be the following: the Southern Railroad, the Seaboard Air Line, and the Atlantic Coast Line; still others would eventually reach into Virginia, including the Baltimore & Ohio and the Pennsylvania Railroad. The rebuilt Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad eventually was linked to Washington, D.C. During the 1880’s, the Pocahontas Coalfield opened up in the far southwest Virginia. Others came in the region too. It provided more demand for railroad transportation. The Virginian Railway in 1909 opened more express action of hauling coal from the mountains in West Virginia to the ports at Hampton Roads. The expansion of railroads caused the creation of new towns and the rapid growth of others like Clifton Forge, Roanoke, Crew, and Victoria. There were railroad crashes like the Wreck of Old 97 near Danville, Virginia in 1903 (which was immortalized later by a popular ballad). With the invention of the cigarette rolling machine, and the great increase in smoking in the early 20th century, cigarettes and other tobacco products became a major industry in Richmond and Petersburg. Tobacco magnates such as Lewis Ginter funded a number of public institutions.
Virginian politicians were divided by the time of the Progressive Era. There were those who wanted a reduction of Virginia’s pre-war debt called the Readjusters and those who opposed those who felt Virginia should repay its entire debt plus interest called Funders. Virginia's pre-war debt was primarily for infrastructure improvements overseen by the Virginia Board of Public Works, much of which were destroyed during the war or in the new State of West Virginia. Former Confederate General and railroad executive William Mahone didn’t win the Democratic nomination for governor. He was the leader of the Readjusters. This was coalition of conservative Democrats including some white plus black Republicans. The Readjusters wanted to stop the power of wealth and privilege. They wanted to invest in public education. They wanted to readjust the state debt in order to protect funding for newly established public education and allocate a fair share to the new state of West Virginia. It proposed to repeal the poll tax and increase funding for schools and other public facilities. This plan attracted biracial and cross party support. Candidate William E. Cameron was governor of Virginia from 1882 to 1886. He was part of the Readjuster Party. Mahone was in the U.S. Senator. Harrison H. Riddleberger was in the Senator too as a Readjuster. Democrat Fitzhugh Lee was governor in 1885. In 1888, the exception to Readjuster and Democratic control was John Mercer Langston, who was elected to Congress from the Petersburg area on the Republican ticket. He was the first black man elected to Congress from the state, and the last for nearly a century. He served one term. A talented and vigorous politician, he was an Oberlin College graduate. He had long been active in the abolitionist cause in Ohio before the Civil War, had been president of the National Equal Rights League from 1864 to 1868, and had headed and created the law department at Howard University, and acted as president of the college. When elected, he was president of what became Virginia State University. Virginia State University is a prominent HBCU.
While the Readjuster Party faded, the goal of public education remained strong, with institutions established for the education of schoolteachers. In 1884, the state acquired a bankrupt women's college at Farmville and opened it as a normal school. Growth of public education led to the need for additional teachers. In 1908, two additional normal schools were established, one at Fredericksburg and one at Harrisonburg, and in 1910, one at Radford. After the Readjuster Party disappeared, Virginia Democrats rapidly passed legislation and constitutional amendments that effectively disfranchised African Americans and many poor whites, through the use of poll taxes and literacy tests. They created white, one-party rule under the Democratic Party for the next 80 years. White state legislators passed statutes that restored white supremacy through imposition of Jim Crow segregation. In 1902, Virginia passed a new constitution that reduced voter registration.
The Progressive Era was the paradox of more reforms to modern Virginia along with Jim Crow oppressing the lives of Black Americans. Reformers in the Progressive movement wanted to modernize the state, increase efficiency, use scientific methods, promote education, and eliminate waste plus corruption. The Democratic Governor Claude Swanson (1906-1910) had a coalition of reformers. They were in the legislature. They build schools and highways. Teachers’ salaries increased and new standards were promoted in education. Virginia’s public health programs grew and funding for prisons persisted. Swanson fought against child labor, lowered railroad rates, and raised corporate taxes. Modern management techniques and systematizing state services developed. A new network of roads was done by black convicts in chain gangs which was very demoralizing for many black people. After Swanson moved to the U.S. Senate in 1910, he promoted Progressivism at the national level as a supporter of President Woodrow Wilson, who had been born in Virginia. Swanson, as a power on naval affairs, promoted the Norfolk Navy Yard and Newport News Ship Building and Drydock Corporation. Swanson's statewide organization evolved into the "Byrd Organization." The SCC or the State Corporation Commission was formed as part of the 1902 Constitution over the opposition of the railroads to regulate railroad policies and rates. The SCC was independent of parties, courts, and big businesses. It was designed to maximize the public interest. It became an effective agency, which especially pleased local merchants by keeping rates low.
Agricultural reformers existed in Virginia. The Progressive Era saw the rural areas dealt with many reforms. Rural areas had declining populations, illiteracy, poor framing techniques, and debilitating diseases among farm animals and human beings. Reformers wanted to upgrade the quality of elementary education. There was federal help. This caused a county agent system called the Virginia Cooperative Extension today. It taught farmers about the latest scientific methods to deal with tobacco and other crops. Farm house wives learned how to maximize their efficiency in the kitchen and nursery. There were upper class women like Lila Meade Valentine of Richmond, Virginia who promoted many progressive reforms like kindergartens, teacher education, nursing programs, and vocation education for black people including white people. The Prohibition movement was dominated by middle class white women too. The women suffrage movement existed, and it had racial issues. Many white women were reluctant to allow black women the black the right to vote. It was unable to broaden its base beyond middle class whites mainly in Virginia. Virginia got the policy changed allowing women the right to vote in 1920 as a result of a national constitutional amendment. In higher education, the key leader was Edwin A. Alderman, president of the University of Virginia, 1904–31. His goal was the transformation of the southern university into a force for state service and intellectual leadership and educational utility. Alderman successfully professionalized and modernized the state's system of higher education. He promoted international standards of scholarship, and a statewide network of extension services. Joined by other college presidents, he promoted the Virginia Education Commission, created in 1910. Alderman's crusade encountered some resistance from traditionalists, and never challenged the Jim Crow system of segregated schooling.
Progressives promoted reforms. Also, some want to deal with the heritage and traditions of old Virginia. There was the aristocratic First Families of Virginia (FFV). The Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities (APVA), founded in Williamsburg in 1889, emphasized patriotism in the name of Virginia's 18th-century Founding Fathers. In 1907, the Jamestown Exposition was held near Norfolk to celebrate the tricentennial of the arrival of the first English colonists and the founding of Jamestown. Attended by numerous federal dignitaries, and serving as the launch point for the Great White Fleet, the Jamestown Exposition also spurred interest in the military potential of the area. The site of the exposition would later become, in 1917, the location of the Norfolk Naval Station. The proximity to Washington, D.C., the moderate climate, and strategic location of a large harbor at the center of the Atlantic seaboard made Virginia a key location during World War I for new military installations. These included Fort Story, the Army Signal Corps station at Langley, Quantico Marine Base in Prince William County, Fort Belvoir in Fairfax County, Fort Lee near Petersburg and Fort Eustis, in Warwick County (now Newport News). At the same time, heavy shipping traffic made the area a target for U-boats, and a number of merchant vessels were attacked or sunk off the Virginia coast.
Between the Two World Wars
Virginian history between World War 1 and the end of World War 2 was long. By 1912, Norfolk Terminal Station or a railway station was opened in Downtown Norfolk. Booker T. Washington and Maury high schools opened in 1911. Huntersville and Lambert’s Park became part of Norfolk in 1911. In 1917, the Norfolk Naval Station opened. A Norfolk local NAACP branch was established in 1917. During the early 20th century, many people believed in temperance (or banning alcohol drinking). By 1916, the state banned the sale and drinking of alcohol via referendum. This was overturned by 1933. The Attucks Theater opened in the Norfolk, Virginia city by 1919 as the “Apollo Theater of the South.” Virginia Beach opened in 1921 as its oceanfront was developed. The NorVA Theater opened in 1922. The Nansemond Hotel opened in 1928. It was destroyed by fire in 1980. Colonial Williamsburg was formed in 1930 that increased tourism in the state. The Shenandoah National Park was created from newly gathered land. There was the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Skyline Drive. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) developed the National Park including Pocahontas State Park. New highway bridges crossed the lower Potomac, Rappahannock, York, and James Rivers. This ended the steamboat service. Transportation across the Chesapeake Bay area improved. Ferryboats continue today, but they rarely exist now.
The Byrd machine was one of the most powerful political machines in American history. Back then, racism was shown in lynching, discrimination, Jim Crow, voter suppression, housing deprivation, and other evil policies. The Byrd Machine promoted racial segregation and the status quo. Black people in Virginia back then were a third of the population, but they had nearly no political power. The electorate was small. The Byrd machine lasted from 1887 to 1966. Many people supported the right to vote. Others didn’t. It would be until the 1960’s that federal civil rights legislation would be passed in 1964 and in 1965. Foreman Field at ODU was created in 1936. The Norfolk Municipal Airport and Norfolk Azealia Garden opened in 1938. By 1939, Granby High School opened. The Edgar Allan Poe Museum opened in 1922. That is in Richmond, Virginia. In 1928, the Virginia World War I Memorial Carillon was created in 1928. From June 27 to July 2, 1939, Richmond hosted the 30th annual conference of the NAACP at the location called The Mosque. Mayor John Fulmer Bright welcomed them. Richmond’s NAACP President Jesse M. Tinsley and the keynote address were made by William H. Hastle and Sam Colomon. The conference had a in person appearance by Eleanor Roosevelt presenting the Spingarn Medal to Marian Anderson as it was broadcast over NBC and CBS stations.
There is a long history involving Virginia and World War II. William T. O’Neill was from Virginia. He was involved in D-Day where he was part of the members of the landing crafts that landed on the Normandy beach. These crafts transported tanks and cargo. Major Thomas Dry Howie served as the operations officer of the 3rd Battalion, 116th Regiment. These were called the Stonewall Brigade on D-Day. He also taught at Stanton Military Academy. He fought the Nazis and died during a July 17, 1944 Nazi attack. His men took his body into the city of St. Lo. His body was covered with the American flag. Howie was one character that inspired Tom Hanks’s Captain Miller character in the movie “Saving Private Ryan.” Howie wrote to his wife, Elizabeth Payne Howie. Also, many African Americans were in Virginia to fight the Nazis and participate in the military. Frederick Branch was the first African American Commissioned 2nd Lt. His wife was Peggy Branch. Frederick Clinton Branch (1922-2005) was the first African American officer of the United States Marine Corps. Having received a bachelor's degree in physics from Temple in 1947, he taught at Dobbins High School in Philadelphia until he retired in 1988. Captain Branch died on April 10, 2005 and was buried at Quantico National Cemetery in Quantico, Virginia. The Virginian George Marshall helped to organize the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after World War II. Europe was devastated after the Second World War. Cities were destroyed, and massive homelessness transpired. The Marshall Plan allowed over $12 billion (or almost $100 billion in 2018 U.S. dollars) in economic assistance to rebuild Western European economies. There was a catch. It was also used to not only modernize industry. It wanted to prevent the spread of Communism in Europe. The Marshall Plan is not with its critics. Critics from the right didn’t like it, since it contradicted laissez faire capitalism. Critics from the left viewed it was a slick economic imperialism to dominate Western European societies and advance the power of transnational corporations. Back then, most Americans, British, French, and Italians supported the Marshall Plan.
World War II transformed Virginia in many ways. The economic stimulus of World War II brought full employment for workers, high wages, and high profits for farmers. Virginia sent 300,000 men and 4,000 women to the Armed services during World War II; Virginia expanded its industrial and naval economic power. Northern Virginia is the site of the Pentagon (at Arlington, Virginia). In 1941, Fort A. P. Hill and Fort Pickett opened. Fort Lee was reactivated. The Newport News shipyard expanded its labor force from 17,000 to 70,000 in 1943. This was when the Radford Arsenal had 22,000 workers making explosives. Turnover was very high in one three month period the Newport News shipyard hired 8,400 new workers as 8,300 others quit.
VA's Civil Rights History
Virginia's Civil Rights history has been a long one, and it continues to this very day. From the slave revolts to the modern era of social activism, black people have fought for civil rights. People of other colors and backgrounds have done the same too. In 1944, Irene Morgan refused to give up her seat on an interstate bus. She was was arrested in Middlesex County, Virginia. She was a courageous black woman. Virginia had segregation laws. Morgan appealed her case to the Supreme Court. By 1948, she won the case of Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia. The ruling stuck down segregation among interstate buses. Virginia continued to enforce interstate bus segregation, which violated the Supreme Court decision. In 1947, there was the Journey of Reconciliation movement. The movement had human beings who traveled into Virginia and other states of the Upper South to use civil disobedience against Virginia's defiance of the Supreme Court's ruling. There was another Supreme Court ruling involving Virginia. It was called Boynton v. Virginia. It desegregated interstate bus terminals. Morgan, Boynton, and the Journey of Reconciliation inspired the 1961 Freedom Rides that fought bus segregation in the Deep South. Along with the bus desegregation cases, Virginia was a contestant in the Supreme Court ruling that invalidated laws prohibiting interracial marriage, Loving v. Virginia. The Loving v. Virginia decision came about in 1967. Many schools, and even an entire school system, were shut down in 1958 and 1959 in attempts by the racist state government of Virginia to block integration, before both the Virginia Supreme Court and a special three-judge panel of Federal District judges from the Eastern District of Virginia, sitting at Norfolk, declared those policies unconstitutional.
Although, most of the laws created to implement massive resistance were overturned by state and federal courts within a year, some aspects of the campaign against integrated public schools continued in Virginia for many more years. The Byrd Organization was one of most racist, sophisticated political movements in world history. Back in the day, conservative Democrats wanted to maintain legal and cultural racial segregation in Virginia. Harry Flood Byrd Sr. lived from 1887 to 1966. He was once Governor of Virginia and was a senior U.S. Senator after World War II. He was once a U.S. Senator after World War II. The Byrd Organization was a political machine that used rural areas to promote their agenda. They never had a strong political power in independent cities or suburban middle class areas.
Using legal challenges, by the 1940's, black attorneys who included Thurgood Marshall, Oliver W. Hill, William H. Hastie, Spottswood W. Robinson III and Leon A. Ransom were gradually winning civil rights cases based upon federal constitutional challenges. Among these was the case of Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, which was actually initiated by students who stepped forward to protest poor conditions at R. R. Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia. Their case became part of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision in 1954. That decision overturned Plessy and declared that state laws which established separate public schools for black and white students denied black children equal educational opportunities and were inherently unequal. As a result, de jure racial segregation was ruled a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, thereby paving the way for Desegregation and the Civil Rights Movement. After the Brown v. Board decision, Byrd, then Senator, was angry. He vowed to stop integration in Virginian schools. So, Byrd and Governor Thomas B. Stanley, and Virginia Senator Garland Gray of rural Sussex County formed the Gray Commission.
The Gray plan wanted to delay segregation policies. It wanted to to allow the Governor to close schools rather than allow their integration, to establish pupil assignment structures, and finally to provide vouchers to parents who chose to enroll their children in segregated private schools. Virginia voters approved the Gray Plan Amendment on January 9, 1956. So, Byrd used the Stanley Plan and the Southern Manifesto to promote the agenda against racial integration. By the late 1950's, the NAACP filed lawsuits to end school segregation in Norfolk, Arlington, Charlottesville and Newport News. To implement massive resistance, in 1956, the Byrd Organization-controlled Virginia General Assembly passed a series of laws known as the Stanley plan, after Governor Thomas Bahnson Stanley. One of these laws, passed on September 21, 1956, forbade any integrated schools from receiving state funds, and authorized the governor to order closed any such school. Another of these laws established a three-member Pupil Placement Board that would determine which school a student would attend. The decision of these Boards was based almost entirely on race. These laws also created tuition grant structures which could channel funds formerly allocated to closed schools to students so they could attend private, segregated schools of their choice. In practice, this caused the creation of the "segregation academies." Brown v. Board II came about to promote desegregation by "all deliberate speed."
It is no secret that the Virginian state government orchestrated the racist, systematic resistance to federal court orders that required the end of segregation. The state legislature even enacted a package of laws. They were called the Stanley plan. These laws wanted to evade racial integration in public schools. Prince Edward County even closed all of its public schools in an attempt to avoid racial integration. They relented in the face of U.S. Supreme Court rulings. The first black students attended the University of Virginia School of Law in 1950 and Virginia Tech in 1953. The massive resistance movement was a strategy declared by U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd Sr. of Virginia (along with his brother in law as the leader of the Virginia General Assembly named Democrat Delegate James M. Thomson of Alexandria, Virginia). The resistance plan was about uniting white politicians and leaders in Virginia to create new state laws and policies to prevent public school desegregation. This came after the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision of 1954. People fought in the courts from 1957 to 1959. Attorney General James Lindsay Almond Jr. was part of the Byrd Organization to succeed Stanley. Virginian authorities closed schools in Norfolk, Chalottesville, and Warren County instead of promoting integration. Many people called for Almond to reopen the schools. Edward R. Murrow aired a national TV documentary titled, "The Lost Class of '59" that highlighted the Norfolk situation. Nonetheless, Norfolk's government, led by Mayor Duckworth, attempted to prevent the schools' reopening by financial maneuvering, until the same 3-judge federal panel found again for the plaintiffs. After the federal and state court decisions of January 19, 1959 struck down the new Virginia mandatory closing law, Arlington integrated its Stratford Junior High School (now called H-B Woodlawn) on February 2, 1959, the same day as Norfolk integrated its schools. Later, Almond wanted limited desegregation and leaving the burden on black parents (in desiring "school choice").
Almond's legislative plan barely passed despite the Byrd Organization's opposition. This earned Senator Byrd's wrath, and after Almond's term expired, Byrd tried to block Almond's appointment as a federal judge by President John F. Kennedy, although Almond was confirmed and served on the U.S. Court of Customs and Patent Appeals from June 1963 until his death in 1986. Almond followed the Perrow Commission named after Mosby Perrow Jr. of Lynchburg. He would later be the President of the Virginia State Board of Education. Prince Edward County school still segregated in the 1960's and the 1970's. In 1986, the Prince Edward Academy accepted black students. It is now the Fuqua School. Public schools in the Commonwealth's western counties, where there were fewer black people, were integrated largely without incident in the early 1960's. Charlottesville's Lane High School and Venable Elementary School both re-opened in February 1959. By the fall of 1960, NAACP litigation had resulted in some desegregation in eleven localities, and the number of at least partially desegregated districts had slowly risen to 20 in the fall of 1961, 29 in the fall of 1962, and 55 (out of 130 school districts) in 1963. However, only 3,700 black pupils or 1.6% attended school with whites even in 1963. In 1968, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that massive resistance to integration was also illegal in Green v. County School Board of New Kent County. That decision laid the groundwork for desegregation busing plans that caused controversy in Virginia, but more famously in Boston. In Richmond, integration came about by 1970, while many whites used white flight to go into schools of different counties. In 1970, the Norfolk City Public Schools and several other Virginia communities were also subjected to busing schemes, also returning to more or less neighborhood school plans some years later.
In 1969, Virginians elected Republican A. Linwood Holton Jr. as Governor, who had opposed massive resistance and labeled it "the state's pernicious anti-desegregation strategy," as governor. The following year, Gov. Holton placed his children (including future Virginia First Lady Anne Holton) in Richmond's mostly African-American public schools, to considerable publicity. He also increased the number of black human beings and women employed in the state government and in 1973 created the Virginia Governor's Schools Program. Furthermore, when Virginia revised its state constitution in 1971, it included one of the strongest provisions concerning public education of any state in the country.
There are tons of civil rights heroes in Virginia. When Barbara Johns was a teenager, she led a strike at Morton High School in Farmville, Virginia to promote justice. The Norfolk 17 were about 17 black American students who were admitted to Norfolk, Virginia Ppublic Schools on February 2, 1959. They came into Norview High School. Some of the Norfolk 17 earned doctorates. Some of their names were Alvarez Gonsouland and Andrew Heidelberg. Andrew Heidelberg was selected as to serve a two year term as a member of the Brown v. Board of Education Scholarship Awards Committee. He was selected by Governor Mark Warner in 2005. He served 2 additional consecutive terms through 2011 by Governor Tim Kaine. He published his own book in 2006. The title of the book is "The Norfolk 17: A Personal Narrative on Desegregation in Norfolk, Virginia in 1958-1962." He wrote a screenplay in 2009. It was based on the book "The Colored Halfback." He passed away on July 6, 2015 at the age of 71. The Richmond 34 refers to a group of Virginia Union University students who participated in a nonviolent sit-in at the lunch counter of Thalhimers department store in downtown Richmond, Virginia. The event was one of many sit-ins to occur throughout the civil rights movement in the 1960's and was essential to helping desegregate the city of Richmond, Virginia. Evelyn Butts was a key person in causing a ban of the poll tax in Virginia and nationwide by the 1960's. Butts became involved in the civil rights movement in the 1950's. During her time as the Oakwood Civic League, she helped create the Rosemont Middle School in her neighborhood so that children wouldn't have to ride the bus to the segregated school. In 1960, she was involved in picketing the Be-Lo Supermarket for not employing black people in higher-level positions. She also protested against black people being told to sit in certain parts of the football stadium. Butts and her lawyer, Joseph A. Jordan Jr., sued the state of Virginia for requiring the poll tax, filing in November of 1963. After Butts won the victory of eliminating the poll tax, she worked in politics until her passing in 1993. In 2017, Butts' daughter, Charlene Butts Ligon, published a book about her mother called "Fearless: How a Poor Virginia Seamstress Took on Jim Crow, Beat the Poll Tax and Changed Her City Forever." The New Journal and Guide called the book "thoughtful and information-filled."
On July 16, 2009, the Richmond Times-Dispatch apologized in an editorial for its role and the role of its parent company and its sister newspaper, The Richmond News Leader, in championing massive resistance to human rights, acknowledging that "the Times-Dispatch was complicit" in an "unworthy cause": "The record fills us with regret, which we have expressed before. Massive Resistance inflicted pain then. Memories remain painful. Editorial enthusiasm for a dreadful doctrine still affects attitudes toward the newspaper." In 1963, there were the events of Danville, Virginia. This was when on May 31, 1963 when representatives of many in the black community protested for their human rights. There was the Danville Christian Progressive Association. This assembly came into the municipal building. They wanted desegregated facilities, equal employment opportunities, representation in city government, and a biracial commission to evaluate racial progress. On June 10, 1963, 60 high school students marched to the municipal building. The leaders were arrested, the children was assaulted with high pressure hoses, and many of their clothes were blown off. Cops used nightsticks to arrest many people. After students called their parents. The parents were unjustly arrested for "contributing to the delinquency of a minor." The Danville protesters fought and later the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 existed to promote freedom against Jim Crow tyranny. With the events of Charlottesville, Virginia of 2017, we have a long way to go. Yet, we came a long way from slavery and Jim Crow too. So, we have to continue to work in the cause of equality, freedom, and justice for all. In 2008, various actions of the Civil Rights Movement were commemorated by the Virginia's Civil Rights Memorial in Richmond, Virginia.
Conclusion (for Fall of 2019)
Many people already know about the important issues or problems in the world from climate change to economic deprivation. Subsequently, dedicated human beings legitimately want specific policy positions in getting things done that benefits all people. Many people criticize neoliberals. These people (who disagree with neoliberalism) include progressives who want a more left Democratic party. What is a neoliberal? A neoliberal is a political person who wants the Wall Street status quo. They believe in the free market that must be utilized to solve every government policy without much governmental involvement. They believe in privatized education, in an more hawkish foreign policy, in cutting the social safety net, in a more moderate approach on economic issues, and they believe in centrism. In other words, neoliberalism is about maintaining the capitalist order at the expense of the exploitation of poor and working class people. So, far right extremism and neoliberalism are enemies of democracy.
One of the most important news today is the increased burning of the Amazon rainforest heavily in Brazil plus other areas of South America. This is a threat to the climate, since climate change is real, and it is a fact that increased greenhouse cases will damage ecological habitats, rise sea levels, and damage infrastructure. The leader of Brazil is the far right person Jair Bolsonaro. Jair has supporters who oppose affirmative action for Afro-Brazilians, they want the status quo, and they believe in an authoritarian agenda that Trump subscribes to. Jair also has cut funding from agencies who wanted to protect the Amazon rainforest. Trees are more cut now. There are more fires now in the Amazon in 2019 than 2018 in its entire year. The rainforest helps to collect CO2 gas. Cutting these trees will allow more carbon and methane to go into the atmosphere caused more climate change. Jair Bolsonaro also said offensive statements about women and minorities. Previously, a more left wing Brazilian government helped to cut Amazon deforestation rates by 80 percent between 2003 and 2011. Far right populism has nothing to do with human rights. It has to do with suppressing these rights. That is why this story is important to be made known for all people.
Trump continues to double down in any anti-Semitic comment that any Jewish person who supports Democrats lacks loyalty to Israel or to Jewish people. Frankly, Jewish people have the right to vote for who they want. That doesn't negate their Jewish heritage. Trump has said many racist, xenophobic comments for years and has to nerve to claim to be tolerant. He also said that he is the "chosen one" to solve the problems in China. He quoted a person who viewed Trump as the "King of Israel" and that Israeli Jewish people view him as the second coming of God. You couldn't make this stuff up. The person who mention this is a person named Wayne Allyn Root. Trump has praised Root. Root is a far right extremist. He or Root accused Barack Obama of not attending Columbia University which is a lie.
Root lied and said that the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas (that killed 58 people) was an act of Muslim terrorism when the gunman wasn't a Muslim. Trump is egoistical and has a messiah complex. That's obvious by the policies that he promotes, him praising authoritarian dictators, and his hatred of democratic institutions. Since Trump's election, there has been a huge rise in racist, anti-Semitic hate crimes in America. We have been through this before in America. Red Summer was a real historic event where hate crimes and murder against black people transpired 100 years ago. That is why it is our responsibility to fight back against evil using constructive actions. We defeated the Confederate enemy at Appomattox back in 1865, we defeated the enemy at Selma in 1965 to advance voting rights, and we will defeat the enemies of truth in the future because good will always triumph over evil. We believe in the Dream still.
By Timothy
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