http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/img/EV_Logo_sm.gif This is the url http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org The first and ultimate online reference work about the Commonwealth /Dean_Jennie_Serepta_1848-1913 Fri, 17 May 2013 09:21:13 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Dean_Jennie_Serepta_1848-1913 Fri, 17 May 2013 09:21:13 EST]]> /Negro_Organization_Society Wed, 15 May 2013 14:30:50 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Negro_Organization_Society Wed, 15 May 2013 14:30:50 EST]]> /Bowser_Rosa_L_Dixon_1855-1931 Tue, 14 May 2013 10:48:12 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Bowser_Rosa_L_Dixon_1855-1931 Tue, 14 May 2013 10:48:12 EST]]> /Daniel_John_Warwick_1842-1910 Tue, 14 May 2013 10:41:22 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Daniel_John_Warwick_1842-1910 Tue, 14 May 2013 10:41:22 EST]]> /Adams_Pauline_1874-1957 Fri, 10 May 2013 13:42:45 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Adams_Pauline_1874-1957 Fri, 10 May 2013 13:42:45 EST]]> /Daniels_Edward_Dwight_1828-1916 Fri, 10 May 2013 11:23:32 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Daniels_Edward_Dwight_1828-1916 Fri, 10 May 2013 11:23:32 EST]]> /Cromwell_John_Wesley_1846-1927 Fri, 10 May 2013 11:14:06 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Cromwell_John_Wesley_1846-1927 Fri, 10 May 2013 11:14:06 EST]]> /Charity_Ruth_LaCountess_Harvey_Wood_1924-1996 Fri, 10 May 2013 10:16:47 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Charity_Ruth_LaCountess_Harvey_Wood_1924-1996 Fri, 10 May 2013 10:16:47 EST]]> /Bailey_Odessa_Pittard_1906-1994 Wed, 08 May 2013 15:00:35 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Bailey_Odessa_Pittard_1906-1994 Wed, 08 May 2013 15:00:35 EST]]> /Banks_William_Lester_1911-1986 Wed, 08 May 2013 14:06:54 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Banks_William_Lester_1911-1986 Wed, 08 May 2013 14:06:54 EST]]> /Burch_Thomas_Granville_1869-1951 Tue, 23 Apr 2013 10:46:49 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Burch_Thomas_Granville_1869-1951 Tue, 23 Apr 2013 10:46:49 EST]]> /Braxton_A_Caperton_1862-1914 Tue, 23 Apr 2013 10:34:31 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Braxton_A_Caperton_1862-1914 Tue, 23 Apr 2013 10:34:31 EST]]> /Carpenter_Miles_Burkholder_1889-1985 Mon, 22 Apr 2013 15:15:02 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Carpenter_Miles_Burkholder_1889-1985 Mon, 22 Apr 2013 15:15:02 EST]]> /Dabney_Virginius_1901-1995 Fri, 19 Apr 2013 15:46:40 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Dabney_Virginius_1901-1995 Fri, 19 Apr 2013 15:46:40 EST]]> /Cox_Earnest_Sevier_1880-1966 Fri, 19 Apr 2013 15:10:34 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Cox_Earnest_Sevier_1880-1966 Fri, 19 Apr 2013 15:10:34 EST]]> /Chaloner_John_Armstrong_1862-1935 Wed, 17 Apr 2013 14:37:27 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Chaloner_John_Armstrong_1862-1935 Wed, 17 Apr 2013 14:37:27 EST]]> /Campbell_Preston_White_1874-1954 Wed, 17 Apr 2013 14:00:35 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Campbell_Preston_White_1874-1954 Wed, 17 Apr 2013 14:00:35 EST]]> /Bryan_Joseph_III_1904-1993 Wed, 17 Apr 2013 11:43:45 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Bryan_Joseph_III_1904-1993 Wed, 17 Apr 2013 11:43:45 EST]]> /Bryan_John_Stewart_1871-1944 Wed, 17 Apr 2013 11:30:41 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Bryan_John_Stewart_1871-1944 Wed, 17 Apr 2013 11:30:41 EST]]> /Aiken_Archibald_Murphey_1888-1971 Mon, 15 Apr 2013 09:35:19 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Aiken_Archibald_Murphey_1888-1971 Mon, 15 Apr 2013 09:35:19 EST]]> /Copeland_Walter_Scott_1856-1928 Mon, 15 Apr 2013 09:30:58 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Copeland_Walter_Scott_1856-1928 Mon, 15 Apr 2013 09:30:58 EST]]> /Negro_in_Virginia_The_1940 Thu, 11 Apr 2013 14:32:01 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Negro_in_Virginia_The_1940 Thu, 11 Apr 2013 14:32:01 EST]]> /Pamunkey_Tribe Fri, 05 Apr 2013 15:28:12 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Pamunkey_Tribe Fri, 05 Apr 2013 15:28:12 EST]]> /Rappahannock_Tribe Fri, 05 Apr 2013 15:18:25 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Rappahannock_Tribe Fri, 05 Apr 2013 15:18:25 EST]]> /Nansemond_Tribe Fri, 05 Apr 2013 14:57:51 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Nansemond_Tribe Fri, 05 Apr 2013 14:57:51 EST]]> /Constitutional_Convention_Virginia_1901-1902 Thu, 04 Apr 2013 16:36:53 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Constitutional_Convention_Virginia_1901-1902 Thu, 04 Apr 2013 16:36:53 EST]]> /Disfranchisement Thu, 04 Apr 2013 15:57:43 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Disfranchisement Thu, 04 Apr 2013 15:57:43 EST]]> /Montague_Andrew_Jackson_1862-1937 Tue, 02 Apr 2013 14:46:18 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Montague_Andrew_Jackson_1862-1937 Tue, 02 Apr 2013 14:46:18 EST]]> /Monacan_Indian_Nation Tue, 02 Apr 2013 11:35:05 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Monacan_Indian_Nation Tue, 02 Apr 2013 11:35:05 EST]]> /Upper_Mattaponi_Tribe Thu, 21 Mar 2013 14:50:18 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Upper_Mattaponi_Tribe Thu, 21 Mar 2013 14:50:18 EST]]> /Mattaponi_Tribe Fri, 01 Mar 2013 13:35:47 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Mattaponi_Tribe Fri, 01 Mar 2013 13:35:47 EST]]> /Chapter_2_Mr_Jefferson_an_excerpt_from_Lewis_Rand_by_Mary_Johnston_1908 Fri, 01 Mar 2013 10:11:52 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Chapter_2_Mr_Jefferson_an_excerpt_from_Lewis_Rand_by_Mary_Johnston_1908 Fri, 01 Mar 2013 10:11:52 EST]]> /Chickahominy_Tribe Fri, 01 Mar 2013 09:22:51 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Chickahominy_Tribe Fri, 01 Mar 2013 09:22:51 EST]]> /Eastern_Chickahominy_Tribe Fri, 01 Mar 2013 09:19:19 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Eastern_Chickahominy_Tribe Fri, 01 Mar 2013 09:19:19 EST]]> /Custalow_George_F_Thunder_Cloud_1865-1949 Wed, 27 Feb 2013 11:26:08 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Custalow_George_F_Thunder_Cloud_1865-1949 Wed, 27 Feb 2013 11:26:08 EST]]> /Cook_George_Major_1860-1930 Wed, 27 Feb 2013 11:22:05 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Cook_George_Major_1860-1930 Wed, 27 Feb 2013 11:22:05 EST]]> /Maggie_Lena_Walker_1864-1934 Fri, 15 Feb 2013 09:13:07 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Maggie_Lena_Walker_1864-1934 Fri, 15 Feb 2013 09:13:07 EST]]> /Democratic_Party_of_Virginia Thu, 31 Jan 2013 17:31:12 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Democratic_Party_of_Virginia Thu, 31 Jan 2013 17:31:12 EST]]> /Poll_Tax Thu, 03 Jan 2013 16:53:00 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Poll_Tax Thu, 03 Jan 2013 16:53:00 EST]]> /Buck_Carrie_Elizabeth_1906-1983 Tue, 18 Dec 2012 17:57:57 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Buck_Carrie_Elizabeth_1906-1983 Tue, 18 Dec 2012 17:57:57 EST]]> /Puller_Lewis_Burwell_Chesty_1898-1970 Thu, 13 Dec 2012 11:20:56 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Puller_Lewis_Burwell_Chesty_1898-1970 Thu, 13 Dec 2012 11:20:56 EST]]> /Marshall_George_C_1880-1959 Thu, 13 Dec 2012 10:41:14 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Marshall_George_C_1880-1959 Thu, 13 Dec 2012 10:41:14 EST]]> /Plecker_Walter_Ashby_1861-1947 Thu, 13 Dec 2012 10:32:40 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Plecker_Walter_Ashby_1861-1947 Thu, 13 Dec 2012 10:32:40 EST]]> /Moton_School_Strike_and_Prince_Edward_County_School_Closings Wed, 12 Dec 2012 10:23:53 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Moton_School_Strike_and_Prince_Edward_County_School_Closings Wed, 12 Dec 2012 10:23:53 EST]]> /Colonial_Williamsburg Thu, 06 Dec 2012 01:41:45 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Colonial_Williamsburg Thu, 06 Dec 2012 01:41:45 EST]]> /Confederate_Battle_Flag Thu, 06 Dec 2012 01:25:05 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Confederate_Battle_Flag Thu, 06 Dec 2012 01:25:05 EST]]> /Buck_v_Bell_1927 Wed, 05 Dec 2012 14:00:22 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Buck_v_Bell_1927 Wed, 05 Dec 2012 14:00:22 EST]]> /Grand_Fountain_of_the_United_Order_of_True_Reformers Tue, 04 Dec 2012 08:22:23 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Grand_Fountain_of_the_United_Order_of_True_Reformers Tue, 04 Dec 2012 08:22:23 EST]]> /Benga_Ota_ca_1883-1916 Tue, 04 Dec 2012 08:20:42 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Benga_Ota_ca_1883-1916 Tue, 04 Dec 2012 08:20:42 EST]]> /Reston_Virginia Thu, 29 Nov 2012 16:06:29 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Reston_Virginia Thu, 29 Nov 2012 16:06:29 EST]]> /Cline_Patsy_1932-1963 Tue, 27 Nov 2012 14:45:03 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Cline_Patsy_1932-1963 Tue, 27 Nov 2012 14:45:03 EST]]> /Swanson_Claude_A_1862-1939 Tue, 13 Nov 2012 15:42:18 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Swanson_Claude_A_1862-1939 Tue, 13 Nov 2012 15:42:18 EST]]> /Hemings-Jefferson_DNA_an_excerpt_from_Jefferson_Fathered_Slave_s_Last_Child_by_Eugene_A_Foster_et_al_November_5_1998 Wed, 07 Nov 2012 15:03:58 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Hemings-Jefferson_DNA_an_excerpt_from_Jefferson_Fathered_Slave_s_Last_Child_by_Eugene_A_Foster_et_al_November_5_1998 Wed, 07 Nov 2012 15:03:58 EST]]> /Racial_Integrity_Laws_of_the_1920s Mon, 15 Oct 2012 14:18:10 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Racial_Integrity_Laws_of_the_1920s Mon, 15 Oct 2012 14:18:10 EST]]> /Ku_Klux_Klan_in_Virginia Fri, 12 Oct 2012 15:49:46 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Ku_Klux_Klan_in_Virginia Fri, 12 Oct 2012 15:49:46 EST]]> /Jenkins_Will_F_1896-1975 Fri, 28 Sep 2012 10:44:56 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Jenkins_Will_F_1896-1975 Fri, 28 Sep 2012 10:44:56 EST]]> /Davis_Henry_Jackson_1882-1947 Thu, 20 Sep 2012 11:17:57 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Davis_Henry_Jackson_1882-1947 Jackson Davis was an educator, educational advisor, and foundation director who served as an important intermediary between African American schools in the South and philanthropic foundations in the North. Throughout his career, he specialized in education in the South, interracial issues, and educational development in the Belgian Congo and Liberia. As a field agent for the General Education Board, Davis worked on behalf of better relations and understanding between whites and African Americans and pioneered the development and promotion of regional centers of education in the South. Davis's relatively moderate position on race relations, however, did not extend to desegregation of public schools.
Thu, 20 Sep 2012 11:17:57 EST]]> /Great_Migration_The Thu, 20 Sep 2012 08:32:21 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Great_Migration_The Thu, 20 Sep 2012 08:32:21 EST]]> /Historical_Highway_Marker_Program Wed, 19 Sep 2012 16:14:41 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Historical_Highway_Marker_Program Established in 1926, Virginia's Historical Highway Marker Program is one of the oldest in the nation. Originally intended to commemorate such traditional subjects as military events, colonial home sites, and prominent Virginians from early American society, topics today range from authors and musicians to architecture, transportation, and industry, and include significant people, places, and events from all segments of Virginia history and society. Early in the twenty-first century, the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, which administers the highway marker program, led a special effort to fund and create new markers honoring African Americans, Virginia Indians, and women, as well as significant places and events related to their accomplishments, in order to represent the scope of Virginia history more completely. There are more than 2,000 markers installed throughout the state, with twenty to forty new markers added every year. New markers are established through a process whereby an applicant (an individual or a group) submits a marker proposal to the Department of Historic Resources. An editorial committee researches and reviews the written proposal and the draft marker text for accuracy and appropriate significance, then DHR staff formally present the marker proposal to the Board of Historic Resources, which must approve all new state historical markers. Once a marker is approved, an order for its manufacture is sent to a foundry for casting. The marker is then shipped, in most cases, to the appropriate local office of the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) for installation. Thereafter, except for markers in a few municipalities, the marker is maintained by VDOT, an important partner in the historical highway marker program.
Wed, 19 Sep 2012 16:14:41 EST]]> /Naval_Station_Norfolk Wed, 19 Sep 2012 16:03:20 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Naval_Station_Norfolk Naval Station Norfolk (NSN) is a United States Navy facility located near the mouth of the Elizabeth River and Hampton Roads at Sewells Point in Norfolk. Covering more than 4,300 acres of land, NSN is one of the largest military facilities in the world. The base serves as the deepwater home port for seventy-five warships and submarines, including five of the U.S. Navy's twelve aircraft carriers. It supports numerous naval air squadrons that operate E-2C Hawkeye early warning aircraft, C-2 Greyhound cargo planes, and CH-46 helicopters. The base is also home to many shore-based Naval and joint forces commands with particular emphasis on advance training activities.
Wed, 19 Sep 2012 16:03:20 EST]]> /Progressive_Movement Wed, 19 Sep 2012 16:01:21 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Progressive_Movement The Progressive movement in Virginia was a series of efforts by early-twentieth-century residents to correct what they perceived as problems or deficiencies in government, business, and society. Their work was part of a national reform movement that existed from late in the 1890s until the United States entered World War I in 1917. Progressive reform in Virginia had many parallels with its national counterpart, but like the rest of the movement's southern manifestation, it also varied from it in important ways. Nationally, Progressives sought to expand democracy, aid victims of industrialization, bring order and efficiency to government and business, and impose morality. State reformers, by contrast, showed little interest in social uplift or racial justice, or in increasing democracy or furthering workers' rights. Instead, they focused on adjusting government and society in ways that both safeguarded the existing social and racial hierarchy and provided order, stability, and economic progress. In Virginia, the movement's participants were predominately urban white professionals, businessmen, educators, church leaders, and politicians; or their wives and daughters. Although the state's reformers had a variety of aims, they worked primarily on restructuring the electorate; improving public education; modifying cities in ways that made them more healthful, efficient, and orderly; upgrading roads; and enacting prohibition of alcohol. They achieved these and other reforms by successfully lobbying government officials for new laws, oversight agencies, and funding measures. While Virginia's Progressives more often than not worked together on their various causes, like reformers elsewhere in the nation, they also occasionally disagreed about the practicality of specific solutions. Those being reformed—typically poor white and African American residents—opposed many of the movement's efforts but lacked the political power to block them.
Wed, 19 Sep 2012 16:01:21 EST]]> /Washington_Booker_T_1856-1915 Wed, 19 Sep 2012 15:58:52 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Washington_Booker_T_1856-1915 Booker T. Washington was an author, educator, orator, philanthropist, and, from 1895 until his death in 1915, the United States' most famous African American. The tiny school he founded in Tuskegee, Alabama, in 1881 is now Tuskegee University, an institution that currently enrolls more than 3,000 students. The most famous of the several books he authored, coauthored, or edited during his lifetime, Up from Slavery (1901), has become a classic of American autobiography, drawing comparisons not only to earlier slave narratives but also to such texts as The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.In the eyes of many of his contemporaries, Washington was an exemplary American citizen, "a public man second to no other American in importance," as the novelist William Dean Howells called him in 1901. When Washington became the first African American to receive an honorary degree from Harvard University in 1896, a Boston newspaper ranked him among "our national benefactors." When he became the first to dine at the White House in 1901, he did so at the invitation of U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt, who would later call Washington "one of the most useful citizens of our land." Even his foremost critic, the African American writer and intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois, acknowledged Washington's status as both a racial and national leader, referring to him in 1903 as "the one recognized spokesman of his ten million fellows, and one of the most notable figures in a nation of seventy millions." Yet Washington also continues to inspire ambivalent and sometimes hostile reactions for having been an "accommodationist": one who, in order to gain a measure of economic success for African Americans in the former slave states, accepted segregation and refused to speak out loudly in favor of other forms of advancement, namely the pursuit of full legal, political, and social equality.
Wed, 19 Sep 2012 15:58:52 EST]]> /Honorary_Virginians Mon, 17 Sep 2012 09:56:44 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Honorary_Virginians Mon, 17 Sep 2012 09:56:44 EST]]> /Great_Depression_in_Virginia Fri, 14 Sep 2012 08:22:50 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Great_Depression_in_Virginia The Great Depression of the 1930s was the most serious economic crisis in American history. A combination of economic maladies—including overproduction, inequitable distribution of wealth, excessive borrowing and speculation, inappropriate tax and tariff policies, and a shaky banking structure—produced an economic collapse that was announced by the stock market crash of October 1929. Over the next four years, millions of Americans (amounting to 25 percent of the work force) lost their jobs; millions more worked only part-time. Factories closed their doors, homes and farms were foreclosed, and the banking system verged on collapse. Itinerants, soup kitchens, and shantytowns became common features of the urban landscape. In Virginia the economic impact of the Great Depression was less severe than in other parts of the country. While the state suffered industrial reverses, above-normal unemployment, and much hardship, its citizens did not experience, in the same degree, the wholesale misfortune that much of the rest of the nation endured.
Fri, 14 Sep 2012 08:22:50 EST]]> /Bristol_Sessions_1927_The Thu, 13 Sep 2012 14:52:40 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Bristol_Sessions_1927_The The Bristol Sessions occurred in 1927 when the Victor Talking Machine Company brought a field unit to Bristol, Tennessee/Virginia, to record musicians from the region. Victor held the sessions on the second and third floors of the Taylor-Christian Hat Company building at 408 State Street on the Tennessee side of Bristol's main thoroughfare, which also serves as the Tennessee-Virginia border. Director Ralph Peer and the Victor engineers recorded fiddle tunes, sacred songs, string bands, harmonica solos, and others from July 25 to August 5. Celebrated as the session that produced the first recordings of country music legends Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family, the session also featured artists who had made previous recordings for other record labels. The session captured on 78-rpm commercial recordings an excellent cross section of the styles of music present in the Blue Ridge Mountains and Appalachian regions.
Thu, 13 Sep 2012 14:52:40 EST]]> /Barrett_Kate_Waller_1858-1925 Thu, 13 Sep 2012 14:34:15 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Barrett_Kate_Waller_1858-1925 Kate Waller Barrett was a prominent physician, social reformer, humanitarian, and leader of the National Florence Crittenton Mission, a progressive organization established in 1883 to assist unmarried women and teenage girls who either had children or were trying to leave prostitution.
Thu, 13 Sep 2012 14:34:15 EST]]> /Chrysler_Museum_of_Art Wed, 12 Sep 2012 14:35:35 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Chrysler_Museum_of_Art The Chrysler Museum of Art is a fine arts museum located along the banks of the Hague in the Ghent district of Norfolk. The museum is modeled in Italian Renaissance style and boasts more than 30,000 pieces of art by a vast array of renowned artists covering many regions and time periods. Greatly expanded by a gift from the art collector Walter P. Chrysler (1909–1988) in 1971, the museum contains one of the world's largest collections of Tiffany glass.
Wed, 12 Sep 2012 14:35:35 EST]]> /Kepone Fri, 31 Aug 2012 09:35:55 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Kepone Kepone, also known as chlordecone, is a toxic, nonbiodegradable insecticide that a chemical plant in Hopewell, Virginia dumped into the James River from 1966 until 1975. The chemical's negative effect on the environment was documented and eventually publicized, leading authorities to shut down the Allied Chemical Corporation plant that produced Kepone and to order fishing bans and advisories. The environmental and medical scandal was one of the first of its kind to play out nationally, and while it eventually led to the destruction of the Virginia fishing industry, it also led to improved environmental awareness.
Fri, 31 Aug 2012 09:35:55 EST]]> /Gibson_Irene_Langhorne_1873-1956 Thu, 30 Aug 2012 16:54:23 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Gibson_Irene_Langhorne_1873-1956 Irene Langhorne Gibson, a native of Danville, Virginia, chaired the Child Planning and Adoption Committee of New York's State Charities Association for twenty-five years. She founded the New York branch of the Southern Women's Educational Alliance, was a member of the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and helped found and was a director of the Protestant Big Sisters, on whose board she served for many years. Though she was a politically active and influential spokeswoman throughout her life, she may best be known as the incarnation of the Progressive Era's model "New Woman"—the "Gibson Girl," a social and fashion template created and popularized by her famous illustrator husband, Charles Dana Gibson.
Thu, 30 Aug 2012 16:54:23 EST]]> /Reynolds_J_Sargeant_1936-1971 Wed, 25 Jul 2012 11:07:40 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Reynolds_J_Sargeant_1936-1971 J. Sargeant Reynolds was a member of the House of Delegates (1966–1967) and the Senate of Virginia (1968–1969) and was the lieutenant governor of Virginia (1970–1971). The son of industrialist Richard S. Reynolds Jr., he enjoyed the advantages of wealth and social position, but used his privilege to advocate for the less fortunate. Reynolds positioned himself as a moderate and won support across the political spectrum despite his more liberal goals, which included education improvement, economic development, and equal opportunity regardless of race. The Virginia Democrats' most promising candidate for the 1973 gubernatorial race, Reynolds was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor in the summer of 1970. After undergoing radiation treatments, he was able to preside over the state senate in January 1971. That April, at a whites-only political gathering in Southside Virginia, he denounced the Byrd Organization's Massive Resistance policy and defiance of United States Supreme Court decisions such as Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina (1971), which upheld the busing of schoolchildren for the purpose of desegregation. Thereafter, his health declined: further radiation treatments weakened his immune system, and he contracted pneumonia. He died on June 13, 1971, at age thirty-four.
Wed, 25 Jul 2012 11:07:40 EST]]> /Peery_George_Campbell_1873-1952 Tue, 26 Jun 2012 12:04:45 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Peery_George_Campbell_1873-1952 George Campbell Peery, a Democratic ally of Harry F. Byrd Sr., served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives (1923–1929) and as governor of Virginia (1934–1938). Peery made his first mark on Virginia's political map and brought a great victory to the Democratic Party when he wrested control of Southwest Virginia's "Fighting Ninth" Congressional District from two decades of Republican occupation. As Byrd's handpicked choice to replace outgoing governor John Garland Pollard, Peery instituted a number of reforms and policies of lasting impact. A Byrd Organization disciple, Peery valued economic thrift and small government, but was not afraid to support more progressive policies when they were politically and economically advantageous. He advocated, for instance, increased funding for public education and recommended that the state adopt an unemployment insurance plan. Peery also created the Department of Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control to regulate alcohol sales and consumption in a post-prohibition Virginia.
Tue, 26 Jun 2012 12:04:45 EST]]> /Robinson_Morgan_Poiteaux_1876-1943 Tue, 19 Jun 2012 11:24:29 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Robinson_Morgan_Poiteaux_1876-1943 Morgan Poitiaux Robinson, Virginia's first state archivist, worked to make the state's records more accessible and to ensure that local records were stored in fireproof buildings. The son of John Enders Robinson and Virginia Morgan, he was born in Richmond on February 11, 1876. After receiving his early education in the city at Mrs. Camm's School for Boys and McGuire's University School, he entered the University of Virginia, where he earned a bachelor's degree, a master's degree, and a law degree.
Tue, 19 Jun 2012 11:24:29 EST]]> /Antilynching_Law_of_1928 Tue, 12 Jun 2012 14:32:24 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Antilynching_Law_of_1928 The Virginia Anti-Lynching Law of 1928, signed by Virginia governor Harry Flood Byrd Sr. on March 14, 1928, was the first measure in the nation that defined lynching specifically as a state crime. The bill's enactment marked the culmination of a campaign waged by Louis Isaac Jaffé, the editor of the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, who responded more forcefully than any other white Virginian to an increase in mob violence in the mid-1920s. Jaffé's efforts, however, which earned him a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 1929, came to fruition only after the state's political and business leadership recognized that mob violence was a threat to their efforts to attract business and industry. Ironically, no white person was ever convicted of lynching an African American under the law.
Tue, 12 Jun 2012 14:32:24 EST]]> /Rosenwald_Schools Thu, 31 May 2012 16:32:06 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Rosenwald_Schools Rosenwald schools were educational facilities built with the assistance of the Rosenwald rural school building program, an initiative to narrow racial schooling gaps in the South by constructing better, more-accessible schools for African Americans. They are called Rosenwald schools because they were partially funded by grants from the Rosenwald Fund, a foundation established by Julius Rosenwald, an Illinois businessman and philanthropist. Between 1912 and 1932, the program helped produce 5,357 new educational facilities for African Americans across fifteen southern states, providing almost 700,000 African American children in rural, isolated communities with state-of-the-art facilities at a time when little to no public money was put toward black education. In Virginia, the initiative helped fund 382 schools and support buildings in seventy-nine counties. Most of these buildings remained in operation until Virginia was forced to comply with the United States Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which outlawed racial segregation in public schools. In 2002, the National Trust for Historic Preservation placed all surviving Rosenwald schools on its list of America's most endangered historic sites.
Thu, 31 May 2012 16:32:06 EST]]> /Jackson_Giles_B_1853-1924 Fri, 04 May 2012 13:44:07 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Jackson_Giles_B_1853-1924 Giles B. Jackson, although born enslaved, became an attorney, entrepreneur, real estate developer, newspaper publisher, and civil rights activist in the conservative mold of his mentor, Booker T. Washington. During the American Civil War (1861–1865), he served as a body servant to his master, a Confederate cavalry colonel. After the war, Jackson worked for the Stewart family in Richmond, where he learned to read and write. Subsequently, he was employed in the law offices of William H. Beveridge, who tutored Jackson in the law. In 1887, Jackson became the first African American attorney certified to argue before the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. The next year, he helped found a bank associated with the United Order of True Reformers, and in 1900 became an aide to Washington, who had just founded the National Negro Business League in Boston. Jackson organized and promoted the Jamestown Negro Exhibit at the Jamestown Ter-Centennial Exposition of 1907 in the face of criticism from some black intellectuals that his attempt to highlight black achievement was itself an accommodation of Jim Crow segregation. He published a newspaper designed to publicize the exhibition and, in 1908, a book detailing its history. His efforts at the end of his life on behalf of a congressional bill aimed at addressing interracial labor problems failed. Jackson died in 1924.
Fri, 04 May 2012 13:44:07 EST]]> /Robertson_A_Willis_1887-1971 Wed, 25 Apr 2012 16:33:51 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Robertson_A_Willis_1887-1971 A. Willis Robertson served in the Senate of Virginia (1916–1922), the United States House of Representatives (1933–1946), and the United States Senate (1946–1966). His career closely paralleled that of his friend and mentor, Harry F. Byrd, the leader of the Democratic Party in Virginia. They were born within two weeks of each other and only a few streets apart in Martinsburg, West Virginia, in 1887. They began their service in the Virginia state senate on the same day in 1916, and arrived at the United States Congress—Byrd to the Senate, Robertson to the House—on the same day in 1933. Though he stood with Byrd on many issues, including civil rights, Robertson asserted his independence from Byrd's political machine, the Byrd Organization, throughout his twenty-year senatorial career. Robertson differed from Byrd in his views on foreign policy and in his support of Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson in 1952 and 1956; in addition, Robertson was not a strong supporter of Byrd's Massive Resistance policy. In 1966 Robertson lost his Senate seat to William B. Spong, a more liberal Democrat from Portsmouth.
Wed, 25 Apr 2012 16:33:51 EST]]> /Loving_v_Virginia_1967 Tue, 03 Apr 2012 09:32:57 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Loving_v_Virginia_1967 In the 1967 case of Loving v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down laws banning interracial marriages in the United States. At one time, as many as forty-one states had such prohibitions. Virginia's law had been passed in 1691 and, after being amended several times, reached its final version in the Racial Integrity Act, passed by the Virginia General Assembly on March 20, 1924. Although every state with such a law banned marriage between a white person and an African American, some laws, including Virginia's, went further and prohibited marriage between whites and other non-white ethnic groups such as Asians and Native Americans. Loving v. Virginia was a landmark case, both in the history of race relations in the United States and in the ongoing political and cultural dispute over the proper definition of marriage.
Tue, 03 Apr 2012 09:32:57 EST]]> /Spong_William_Belser_Jr_1920-1997 Wed, 07 Mar 2012 10:15:52 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Spong_William_Belser_Jr_1920-1997 William Belser Spong Jr. was a Virginia lawyer and politician who served in the House of Delegates (1954–1955), the Senate of Virginia (1956–1966), and the United States Senate (1966–1973). He was born in Portsmouth on September 29, 1920, to William Belser Spong and Emily Nichols Spong. He attended public schools in Portsmouth and attended Hampden-Sydney College before receiving a law degree from the University of Virginia in 1947. Spong served in the 93rd Bomber Group of the Eighth Air Force during World War II (1939–1945). He was admitted to the Virginia Bar in 1947 and practiced law in Portsmouth. At the same time he lectured in law and government at the College of William and Mary.
Wed, 07 Mar 2012 10:15:52 EST]]> /United_Daughters_of_the_Confederacy Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:59:22 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/United_Daughters_of_the_Confederacy The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) was formed in 1894 to protect and perpetuate Confederate memory following the American Civil War (1861–1865). According to the group's founding documents, it sought "to fulfill the duties of sacred charity to the survivors of the war and those dependent upon them … to perpetuate the memory of our Confederate heroes and the glorious cause for which they fought." Through chapters in Virginia and other southern states (and even a handful in the North), members directed most of their efforts toward raising funds for Confederate monuments, sponsoring Memorial Day parades, caring for indigent Confederate widows, sponsoring essay contests and fellowships for southern students, and maintaining Confederate museums and relic collections. The context of these efforts was the Lost Cause interpretation of the Civil War, which emphasized states' rights and secession over slavery as causes of the war and was often used to further the goals of white supremacists in the twentieth century. The organization continues to perform memorial work, its national headquarters located in the former Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia.
Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:59:22 EST]]> /Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964 Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:15:46 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a landmark piece of national legislation, not only for the civil rights movement but for the emerging women's movement of the 1960s. It officially outlawed discrimination in public accommodations and employment and established the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission to enforce those provisions. In contrast to earlier civil rights measures, it included a ban on employment discrimination on the basis of gender, as well as race, color, and religion, making it the most comprehensive civil rights bill in American history and giving the revived women's movement new legal—and moral—weight. Yet, in an ironic twist, the legislation banned gender discrimination only because of the efforts of Howard W. Smith, U.S. representative from Virginia, a leader of the Conservative Coalition in Congress, and an opponent of civil rights. His tireless attempts to defeat the bill—including adding "sex" as grounds for illegal discrimination, which he believed would guarantee the bill's failure—resulted in a more expansive bill passing.
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:15:46 EST]]> /Shenandoah_National_Park Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:53:16 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Shenandoah_National_Park Shenandoah National Park in the northern Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia was created in 1926 to preserve an area of natural beauty and provide recreational opportunities for the people in the surrounding region. Long populated by Siouan- and Iroquoian-speaking Indians, the area was first opened for settlement by whites early in the eighteenth century. When the National Park Service expressed an interest in a park in the Appalachian Mountains, a group of Virginia businessmen, in league with then-state senator Harry F. Byrd Sr., championed a "skyline" drive through the Blue Ridge. Byrd's fund-raising and administrative skills proved to be crucial to the project, especially in the wake of dwindling federal support during the Great Depression. The 160,000-acre park (which has since grown to almost 200,000 acres) was dedicated in 1936 and the Skyline Drive completed in 1939.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:53:16 EST]]> /Jamestown_350th_Anniversary_1957 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:52:23 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Jamestown_350th_Anniversary_1957 In 1957, Virginia hosted an eight-month-long celebration known as the "Jamestown Festival" to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the founding of the colony at Jamestown. Organized through the efforts of the Virginia 350th Anniversary Commission the festival emphasized the key role that Jamestown, as the first permanent English settlement in North America, played in American history. The event drew national and international attention to the state, and brought more than a million visitors to the Jamestown area, including then-U.S. vice president Richard Nixon and Queen Elizabeth II of England. It also suffered from the limitations of its day, namely the failure to take into account more fully the perspectives of Virginia Indians and African Americans.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:52:23 EST]]> /The_Civilian_Conservation_Corps Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:35:57 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/The_Civilian_Conservation_Corps The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was the most popular of United States president Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal programs, even winning the endorsement of Virginia's conservative U.S. senator Harry Flood Byrd Sr. (While Byrd was a fellow Democrat, he advocated a small federal government that did not spend ahead of means or interfere in state affairs.) Designed to alleviate the widespread unemployment caused by the Great Depression, the CCC recruited unmarried, unemployed young men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five to spend six months in camps doing conservation work, primarily in the nation's forests. They were paid $1 a day, most of which was sent to their parents in $25 monthly allotments. The War Department ran most of the camps on a military basis, providing supervision and discipline. Although some critics saw a fascist-like militarism in such circumstances, the CCC had the positive, although unintended consequence of preparing men for service in World War II (1939–1945). At its peak, the CCC employed half-a-million men in more than 2,500 camps, and 2.5 million men enlisted during its nine-year existence.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:35:57 EST]]> /Jamestown_Ter-Centennial_Exposition_of_1907 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:36:42 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Jamestown_Ter-Centennial_Exposition_of_1907 The Jamestown Ter-Centennial Exposition, marking the three hundredth anniversary of the founding of Jamestown and the Virginia colony by settlers from England, was held in Norfolk, Virginia, from April 26 to November 30, 1907. The event was one in a series of large fairs and expositions held across the United States, beginning with the 1893 World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago, which commemorated the four hundredth anniversary of Christopher Columbus's landing in America. Such events were designed as international showcases for arts and technology and were often linked to important anniversaries in order to highlight the notion of historical "progress." More than its predecessors, the Jamestown exhibition emphasized athletics and military prowess, the latter drawing some protests. Among many dignitaries who visited the exposition were U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt, the author Mark Twain, the educator Booker T. Washington, representatives from more than twenty nations abroad, and a number of foreign naval ships. Although the exhibition on African Americans was considered to be particularly successful, the event in general was a financial fiasco, plagued by poor management, overly ambitious plans, insufficient resources, and tight deadlines. The naval display, however, was impressive enough that in 1917 the exposition's site became home to Naval Air Station Hampton Roads (later Naval Station Norfolk).
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:36:42 EST]]> /Association_for_the_Preservation_of_Virginia_Antiquities Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:22:56 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Association_for_the_Preservation_of_Virginia_Antiquities Organized in 1889, the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities (APVA), currently known as APVA/Preservation Virginia, was the nation's first statewide historic preservation organization. Spearheaded by an elite mix of female antiquarians and their "gentlemen advisers," it became a sanctioned instrument of conservatives who strove to counter social and political changes after the American Civil War (1861–1865) by emphasizing southern history and tradition. The APVA enshrined old buildings, graveyards, and historical sites—many of which were forlorn, if not forgotten—and exhibited them as symbols of Virginia's identity. As the national preservation movement evolved, the APVA became less overtly political and now identifies itself as a professional organization dedicated to preserving and promoting the Commonwealth's heritage.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:22:56 EST]]> /Green_Charles_C_et_al_v_County_School_Board_of_New_Kent_County_Virginia Thu, 15 Dec 2011 08:15:41 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Green_Charles_C_et_al_v_County_School_Board_of_New_Kent_County_Virginia Thu, 15 Dec 2011 08:15:41 EST]]> /Spencer_Anne_1882-1975 Wed, 07 Sep 2011 16:42:52 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Spencer_Anne_1882-1975 Anne Spencer was a poet, a civil rights activist, a teacher, a librarian, and a gardener. While fewer than thirty of her poems were published in her lifetime, she was an important figure of the black literary movement of the 1920s—the Harlem Renaissance—and only the second African American poet to be included in the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry (1973). Noted for iambic verse preoccupied with biblical and mythological themes, Spencer found fans in such Harlem heavyweights as James Weldon Johnson, who commented on her "economy of phrase and compression of thought." In addition to her writing, Spencer helped to found the Lynchburg chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She was also an avid gardener and hosted a salon at her Lynchburg garden, which attracted prominent figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Her former residence is now a museum that is open to the public.
Wed, 07 Sep 2011 16:42:52 EST]]> /Daniel_Wilbur_Clarence_Dan_1914-1988 Tue, 30 Aug 2011 15:27:00 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Daniel_Wilbur_Clarence_Dan_1914-1988 Tue, 30 Aug 2011 15:27:00 EST]]> /Massive_Resistance Wed, 29 Jun 2011 11:09:35 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Massive_Resistance Massive Resistance was a policy adopted in 1956 by Virginia's state government to block the desegregation of public schools mandated by the U.S. Supreme Court in its 1954 ruling in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. Advocated by U.S. senator Harry F. Byrd Sr., a conservative Democrat and former governor who coined the term, Massive Resistance reflected the racial views and fears of Byrd's power base in Southside Virginia as well as the senator's reflexive disdain for federal government intrusion into state affairs. When schools were shut down in Front Royal in Warren County , Charlottesville , and Norfolk to prevent desegregation, the courts stepped in and overturned the policy. In the end, Massive Resistance added more bitterness to race relations already strained by the resentments engendered by the caste system and delayed large-scale desegregation of Virginia's public schools for more than a decade. Meanwhile, Virginia's defiance served as an example for the states of the Lower South, and the legal vestiges of Massive Resistance lasted until early in the 1970s.
Wed, 29 Jun 2011 11:09:35 EST]]> /Harrison_Burton_Mrs_1843-1920 Thu, 09 Jun 2011 08:42:40 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Harrison_Burton_Mrs_1843-1920 Mrs. Burton Harrison, also known as Constance Cary Harrison, was a prolific American novelist late in the nineteenth century who came from a prominent Virginia family. As a young woman, she witnessed the destruction of the American Civil War (1861–1865) and nursed the Confederate wounded in Manassas and Richmond. After the war, Harrison toured Europe, eventually married, and settled down in New York City. She was active in elite New York society and produced a large body of work, much of it popular serialized fiction and sentimental romance, in which she recorded the social mores of her time. The author of more than fifty works, including short stories, articles and essays, children's books, and short plays, she is best known for her 1911 autobiography, Recollections Grave and Gay.
Thu, 09 Jun 2011 08:42:40 EST]]> /Clark_Adèle_1882-1983 Tue, 17 May 2011 16:24:45 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Clark_Adèle_1882-1983 Adèle Clark was a founding member of the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia, nineteen years the chair of Virginia's League of Women Voters, dean of women at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, New Deal–era field worker, and an accomplished artist and arts advocate. Clark called politics and art her "creative spirits," and she exemplified the crucial role women played in the social reform movements of the twentieth century, applying her sharp intellect, artistic skills, and fiery determination to championing both women and the arts.
Tue, 17 May 2011 16:24:45 EST]]> /Lost_Cause_The Mon, 09 May 2011 09:35:42 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Lost_Cause_The The Lost Cause is an interpretation of the American Civil War (1861–1865) that seeks to present the war, from the perspective of Confederates, in the best possible terms. Developed by white Southerners, many of them former Confederate generals, in a postwar climate of economic, racial, and gender uncertainty, the Lost Cause created and romanticized the "Old South" and the Confederate war effort, often distorting history in the process. For this reason, many historians have labeled the Lost Cause a myth or a legend. It is certainly an important example of public memory, one in which nostalgia for the Confederate past is accompanied by a collective forgetting of the horrors of slavery. Providing a sense of relief to white Southerners who feared being dishonored by defeat, the Lost Cause was largely accepted in the years following the war by white Americans who found it to be a useful tool in reconciling North and South. The Lost Cause has lost much of its academic support but continues to be an important part of how the Civil War is commemorated in the South and remembered in American popular culture.
Mon, 09 May 2011 09:35:42 EST]]> /Boyle_Sarah_Patton_1906-1994 Tue, 26 Apr 2011 11:39:01 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Boyle_Sarah_Patton_1906-1994 Sarah Patton Boyle was one of Virginia's most prominent white civil rights activists during the 1950s and 1960s and author of the widely acclaimed autobiography The Desegregated Heart: A Virginian's Stand in Time of Transition (1962). Her desegregation efforts began in 1950 when she wrote to Gregory Swanson welcoming him as the University of Virginia's first black law student. Through her experience with Swanson, her views on desegregation evolved from being a proponent of gradual desegregation to a leading and often controversial white voice for immediate desegregation in public schools and in higher education. Her 1955 article for the Saturday Evening Post, titled "Southerners Will Like Integration," prompted a fierce backlash that included having a cross burned in her Charlottesville yard. Boyle did not moderate her views, however, and worked closely with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), earning praise from Martin Luther King Jr., Lillian Smith, and others, as well as numerous awards and a measure of national fame. The intensity of her political involvement triggered a deep depression, however, and she eventually became disillusioned with the civil rights movement, retiring from activism in 1967. In 1983, she authored a memoir that contemplated her experience dealing with age discrimination.
Tue, 26 Apr 2011 11:39:01 EST]]> /Chesapeake_Bay_Bridge-Tunnel Tue, 19 Apr 2011 08:49:54 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Chesapeake_Bay_Bridge-Tunnel The Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel (CBBT) connects the Virginia mainland at the city of Virginia Beach directly with the Delmarva Peninsula. Completed in 1964 and recognized by the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1965 as one of the "Seven Engineering Wonders of the Modern World," the structure is comprised of bridges, tunnels, and land roads that span a total of twenty-three miles. Initially considered to be a risky financial move, the CBBT is now a profitable and expanding enterprise.
Tue, 19 Apr 2011 08:49:54 EST]]> /Republican_Party_of_Virginia Tue, 12 Apr 2011 09:10:52 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Republican_Party_of_Virginia The Republican Party is one of two major political parties in Virginia. Although founded in 1854 in opposition to the spread of slavery, the party did not take hold in Virginia until after the American Civil War (1861–1865). Even then, for nearly a century the Republicans were an ineffectual, minority party with only pockets of regional strength. During this period, the conservative Democratic Party dominated politics in Virginia and the rest of the South. After World War II (1939–1945), economic growth, demographic trends, electoral reforms, and policy debates combined to spur a realignment that gradually brought the Virginia parties into line philosophically with their national counterparts. As the center-right party in a conservative-leaning state, the Virginia Republican Party became consistently competitive. Following the mid-1970s, Virginia politics settled into a pattern characterized by active competition between the two major party organizations and their candidates. Partisan fortunes ebbed and flowed, but neither party established durable majority support on a statewide basis. In the twenty-first century Republican candidates in Virginia routinely compete with their Democratic rivals for the support of nonaligned voters (generally called "independents") in addition to mobilizing fellow partisans.
Tue, 12 Apr 2011 09:10:52 EST]]> /Danville_Civil_Rights_Demonstrations_of_1963 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 13:50:05 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Danville_Civil_Rights_Demonstrations_of_1963 The Danville civil rights demonstrations began peacefully late in May 1963 when local civil rights leaders organized demonstrations, sit-ins, and marches to protest segregation in all spheres, but especially in municipal government, employment, and public facilities. As protests accelerated, however, white authorities responded early in June with tough legal stratagems and violence, attacking demonstrators with clubs and fire hoses. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) all sent state and national leaders to Danville to assist the African American protesters, but to little avail. The legal resistance displayed by authorities—injunctions, ordinances, and court procedures condemned by the U.S. Justice Department—proved so effective and unyielding that protests were stymied, resulting in few immediate gains for African Americans.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 13:50:05 EST]]> /Pentagon_The Thu, 07 Apr 2011 13:40:47 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Pentagon_The The Pentagon, located in Arlington, Virginia, is home to the Department of Defense and serves as military headquarters for the United States. The enormous, 6.24-million-square-foot concrete structure is the largest office building in the world, covering thirty-four acres. Built to house the burgeoning War Department on the eve of the United States' entry into World War II (1939–1945), the headquarters was constructed in just seventeen months. From the moment Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson and Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall moved into the building in November 1942, the Pentagon has served as the focal point of American military planning and operations. Vital decisions regarding the D-Day invasion of Europe and the development of the atomic bomb were made at the Pentagon during World War II. In subsequent years the Pentagon has been the setting for many more critical decisions, from the Cold War and the Vietnam War (1961–1975) to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. On September 11, 2001, terrorists flew a hijacked passenger jet into the Pentagon, killing 184 people and seriously damaging the building but not shutting it down. With its iconic, five-sided shape, the Pentagon is one of the world's most recognizable buildings and it has come to serve as a symbol of American military strength.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 13:40:47 EST]]> /Wilson_Woodrow_1856-1924 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 13:26:12 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Wilson_Woodrow_1856-1924 Woodrow Wilson was president of Princeton University (1902–1910), governor of New Jersey (1911–1913), twenty-eighth president of the United States (1913–1921), and creator of the League of Nations. Although he was sometimes caricatured as a northern academic, Wilson was born in Staunton, Virginia, and considered himself to be southern. As such, he was the first southerner elected president since Zachary Taylor in 1848, and brought to the office a progressive zeal for reform, both economic and social, as well as the typical mindset of the southern white political class, which considered African Americans second-class citizens, that contributed to his decision strictly to segregate the federal workforce. He is perhaps best known for leading the United States into the World War I (1914–1918), despite an election vow to do otherwise, and for helping to negotiate the resulting Treaty of Versailles. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 13:26:12 EST]]> /Wilder_Lawrence_Douglas_1931- Thu, 07 Apr 2011 13:22:17 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Wilder_Lawrence_Douglas_1931- L. Douglas Wilder was governor of Virginia from 1990 until 1994. His was a political career of many firsts: the grandson of slaves, he was the first African American elected governor of any state in America. He was the first black member of the Virginia Senate in the twentieth century. And he was the first African American to win statewide office in Virginia when he was elected lieutenant governor in 1985. A Democrat, he ran briefly for United States president in 1991 and in 2004 was elected mayor of Richmond, serving until 2008.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 13:22:17 EST]]> /Byrd_Harry_Flood_Jr_1914- Thu, 07 Apr 2011 13:21:18 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Byrd_Harry_Flood_Jr_1914- Harry F. Byrd Jr. represented Virginia in the United States Senate from 1965 to 1983 after serving seventeen years in the Senate of Virginia. A member of one of Virginia's most powerful political families, Byrd took over the Senate seat from his father in 1965. Byrd, however, was also something of a dissident, quitting the Democratic Party in 1970 to run as an Independent. In addition to his career in politics, Byrd followed his father into journalism as well, serving as editor and publisher of the Winchester Star from 1935 to 1981 and as publisher of the Harrisonburg Daily News-Record from 1939 to 2001.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 13:21:18 EST]]> /Ashe_Arthur_1943-1993 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 13:20:09 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Ashe_Arthur_1943-1993 Arthur Ashe was a professional tennis player, broadcaster, author, and activist. Known for his on-court grace and low-key demeanor, he was the first black men's tennis champion at the U.S. Open and Wimbledon, the first African American to play for and captain the U.S. Davis Cup team, and the first black man inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. Yet it was and remains Ashe's accomplishments outside of professional tennis for which he is most noted. He was the first and only African American to have a statue of his likeness erected on Richmond's historic Monument Avenue and one of the most prominent athletes of any race to die from AIDS.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 13:20:09 EST]]> /Holton_A_Linwood_1923- Thu, 07 Apr 2011 13:18:52 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Holton_A_Linwood_1923- A. Linwood Holton was a governor of Virginia (1970–1974) and the first Republican to hold the office since Reconstruction (1865–1877). Hailing from Big Stone Gap in southwest Virginia, Holton was among the "Mountain and Valley" Republicans who began to gain statewide support in the 1950s in opposition to the Byrd Organization and in support of public school desegregation. Holton won a narrow race for governor in 1969 with a coalition that included a substantial number of African American and white working-class voters. As governor, he declared an end to Massive Resistance, the state's anti–desegregation policy, announcing, "The era of defiance is behind us." In 1970, he was photographed escorting his daughter Tayloe into a nearly all-black high school in Richmond. In addition, Holton reorganized the executive branch, worked to clean Virginia's polluted waters, and helped create a unified Ports Authority in Hampton Roads. He was not able to overcome increasing factionalism among state Republicans, however, and the party lost a series of statewide elections in the 1970s. A bold and decisive progressive on matters of race relations, he did much to break the Democrats' one-party dominance of Virginia's political life. He was less successful at imprinting his own moderate conservative philosophy on the Virginia Republican Party.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 13:18:52 EST]]> /Woman_Suffrage_in_Virginia Thu, 07 Apr 2011 13:01:54 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Woman_Suffrage_in_Virginia The woman suffrage movement, which sought voting rights for women, began in Virginia as early as 1870. In 1909, its most vocal supporters organized around the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia, which joined with national groups in an effort to change state and local laws and pass an amendment to the United States Constitution. The Nineteenth Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, was passed in Congress in 1919 and ratified by the states a year later. Virginia, however, delayed its ratification until 1952. By then, women had been voting and, slowly, winning elected office in the state for more than 30 years.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 13:01:54 EST]]> /Virginia_s_State_Parks Thu, 07 Apr 2011 12:57:00 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Virginia_s_State_Parks Virginia's state parks system was launched on June 15, 1936, when the six inaugural parks opened simultaneously. The creation of those parks was made possible through one of U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs, the goal of which was to create jobs to help pull the country out of the Great Depression. The success of those first six parks in providing citizens with recreational opportunities and preserving Virginia's natural areas led to an expansion to thirty-four state parks established in Virginia in 2008.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 12:57:00 EST]]> /Virginia_Writers_Project Thu, 07 Apr 2011 12:55:55 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Virginia_Writers_Project The Virginia Writers Project was formed in 1935 as part of the Works Progress Administration, a federal program designed to combat the Great Depression. With a staff of approximately forty Virginia teachers, writers, librarians, clerks, and other professionals, the VWP interviewed thousands of Virginians from all walks of life about their lives, work, and memories. In addition, VWP interviewers collected and checked information about the geography and history of Virginia, a process that resulted in two important books: the 700-page Virginia: A Guide to the Old Dominion (1940) and The Negro in Virginia (1940), which included oral histories from Virginians who had lived through slavery and the American Civil War (1861–1865). The VWP shut down in 1943, but its material was archived—much of it at the Library of Virginia—where it continues to be useful to those interested in primary resources about Virginia's past.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 12:55:55 EST]]> /Valentine_Lila_Meade_1865-1921 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 12:54:05 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Valentine_Lila_Meade_1865-1921 Lila Meade Valentine was a suffragist, education reformer, and public-health advocate. During her abbreviated life, she played a vital role in creating and running organizations that improved the health-care and public school systems of her native city of Richmond. Valentine also became an ardent supporter of woman suffrage early in the 1900s, cofounding the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia and serving as an active member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. A talented organizer and an eloquent speaker, Valentine led efforts on behalf of suffrage that came to fruition in 1920, when the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, giving women the right to vote.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 12:54:05 EST]]> /Thompson_Ida_Mae_1866-1947 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 12:52:30 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Thompson_Ida_Mae_1866-1947 Ida Mae Thompson was an important figure in Virginia's woman suffrage movement, not for her political work but for her recordkeeping. First as a member of the Equal Suffrage League, the organization that led the effort to win women the right to vote, and then as a member of the League of Women Voters, Thompson collected and preserved the movement's history.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 12:52:30 EST]]> /Stuart_Henry_Carter_1855-1933 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 12:48:39 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Stuart_Henry_Carter_1855-1933 Henry C. Stuart served as the governor of Virginia from 1914 until 1918. A wealthy cattleman from Southwest Virginia known for his encyclopedic mind, his extensive knowledge of agriculture, and his moderately progressive impulses against industrialization and "demon rum," Stuart also helped write the landmark Constitution of 1902, which, among other provisions, removed voting rights from African Americans and illiterate whites. He was one of the first commissioners to serve on the State Corporation Commission and, like most other Virginia Democrats of his day, worked to disenfranchise African Americans, regulate railroads and other corporations, reform the state's tax and legal codes, and prohibit the construction of highways financed by state highway bonds.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 12:48:39 EST]]> /Stanley_Thomas_Bahnson_1890-1970 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 12:46:24 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Stanley_Thomas_Bahnson_1890-1970 Thomas B. Stanley served as governor of Virginia (1954–1958) during the turbulent first years of Massive Resistance to school desegregation. His initial reaction to the 1954 Supreme Court of the United States decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas was moderate, but Stanley, a politician of few gifts, was unable to curb increasing calls for a defiant stance to school desegregation. Stanley eventually followed the lead of more conservative Democrats and backed legislation designed to maintain what supporters called "separate but equal" schools.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 12:46:24 EST]]> /Smith_Howard_Worth_1883-1976 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 12:43:49 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Smith_Howard_Worth_1883-1976 Howard W. Smith, a Virginia Democratic congressman, was one of America's most powerful politicians from the New Deal to the Great Society. A master obstructionist who chaired the House Rules Committee, he used his power to fight the liberal agendas of presidential administrations from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Lyndon B. Johnson. He was particularly concerned about the influence of Communists and wrote the Alien Registration Act of 1940, legislation that eventually paved the way for government targeting of radicals during the Cold War. He also saw Communism at the heart of the civil rights movement and attempted to kill the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by introducing an amendment to include women under its provisions. Ironically, this helped the measure pass and stands as an important part of Smith's legacy.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 12:43:49 EST]]> /Price_James_Hubert_1878-1943 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 12:36:10 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Price_James_Hubert_1878-1943 James H. Price was a governor of Virginia (1938–1942) who advocated for a series of progressive policies designed to help those hurt by the Great Depression of the 1930s. His most notable achievement came in 1938 with the enactment of an Old Age Assistance Plan that enabled Virginians to receive federal Social Security benefits. Throughout his term, Price battled with United States Senator Harry F. Byrd Sr. and members of his political machine over policy and patronage issues. While Price won some of these battles, by 1940 Byrd and the Byrd Organization had derailed his legislative agenda, leaving a defeated Price to spend most of his last two years in office helping to mobilize Virginia for war.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 12:36:10 EST]]> /New_Deal_in_Virginia Thu, 07 Apr 2011 12:30:48 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/New_Deal_in_Virginia In March 1933, the newly inaugurated president of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a Democrat, addressed the problems created by the Great Depression by announcing a vast array of federal programs that came to be known as the New Deal. During the first 100 days of his administration, a Democratic Congress created the "alphabet agencies" (so called because of their well-known abbreviations) to deal with unemployment, economic stagnation, low farm prices, and home and farm foreclosures.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 12:30:48 EST]]> /Muse_Benjamin_1898-1986 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:50:04 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Muse_Benjamin_1898-1986 Benjamin Muse, a journalist based in Manassas, Virginia, emerged as one of the state's most prominent white liberals during the period of the Massive Resistance movement, which opposed the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 decision outlawing segregation in public schools, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. Through a weekly column in the Washington Post, Muse criticized what he perceived to be the undemocratic practices of the Byrd Organization, the Virginia political machine led by U.S. senator and former governor Harry F. Byrd Sr., a Democrat. Muse also charged that Massive Resistance represented a desperate gamble by rural leaders to preserve the state's one-party system. Throughout the five-year crisis, Muse insisted that Virginia must comply with the Supreme Court's ruling, and he championed the efforts of white moderates and liberals from the cities and suburbs who opposed the state's plan, which amounted to abandoning public education rather than accepting any degree of racial integration. In 1959, after federal and state courts invalidated Virginia's school-closing scheme, Muse became the director of the Southern Leadership Project in order to spread the message of compliance with Brown to other states across the region.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:50:04 EST]]> /Munford_Mary-Cooke_Branch_1865-1938 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:49:08 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Munford_Mary-Cooke_Branch_1865-1938 Mary-Cooke Branch Munford was an advocate of woman suffrage, interracial cooperation, education, health, and labor reforms. Armed with a pedigree that connected her to some of the wealthiest families of Virginia, she threw herself into such "unfeminine" pursuits as education reform and civil rights. She helped to found the Richmond Education Association, was the first woman to serve on the city's school board, was a member of the University of Virginia's Board of Visitors, and was the first woman to serve on the College of William and Mary's Board of Visitors. Munford also served on the board of the National Urban League, was a founding member of the Virginia Inter-Racial League, and became a trustee at the historically black Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:49:08 EST]]> /Moton_Robert_Russa_1867-1940 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:47:50 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Moton_Robert_Russa_1867-1940 Robert Russa Moton was one of the most prominent black educators in the United States in the first decades of the twentieth century. After graduating from the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (later Hampton Institute and now Hampton University) in Hampton, Virginia, in 1890, he served as the school's commandant of cadets from 1891 until 1915. He was a close friend of Booker T. Washington, the founding principal of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, and the two shared a conservative vision of race relations. They argued, sometimes controversially, that African Americans should not openly defy segregation, but instead cooperate with whites and better themselves through education. After Washington's death in 1915, Moton became the second principal of Tuskegee, where he made significant contributions to the quality of education, especially in teacher training. He served on various national boards and, during World War I (1914–1918), went to Europe on behalf of U.S. president Woodrow Wilson to investigate the conditions of black soldiers. Moton Field at Tuskegee was named for him, as was Robert Russa Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia, the site of a student walkout in 1951.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:47:50 EST]]> /Morgan_v_Virginia Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:45:42 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Morgan_v_Virginia Morgan v. Virginia is an often-overlooked landmark case of the civil rights movement. Decided on June 3, 1946, nearly a decade before Rosa Parks challenged segregated seating on a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama, the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in this case struck down Virginia's law requiring racial segregation in interstate public transportation.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:45:42 EST]]> /Mason_Lucy_Randolph_1882-1959 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:43:40 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Mason_Lucy_Randolph_1882-1959 Lucy Randolph Mason was a social liberal and prominent labor activist who took advantage of a genteel southern pedigree in order to promote the aggressive Congress of Industrial Organizations throughout the South from the 1930s to the 1950s.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:43:40 EST]]> /Labor_in_Virginia_During_the_Twentieth_Century Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:37:15 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Labor_in_Virginia_During_the_Twentieth_Century Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:37:15 EST]]> /Henderson_Helen_Timmons_1877-1925 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:29:55 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Henderson_Helen_Timmons_1877-1925 Helen Timmons Henderson, from the town of Council in Buchanan County, served in the Virginia House of Delegates (1924–1925), one of the first two women elected to that body (the other was Norfolk's Sarah Lee Fain). She die before having the opportunity to run for a second term.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:29:55 EST]]> /Hancock_Gordon_Blaine_1884-1970 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:28:45 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Hancock_Gordon_Blaine_1884-1970 Gordon Blaine Hancock was a professor at Virginia Union University, pastor of Moore Street Baptist church in Richmond , and a leading spokesman for African American equality in the generation before the civil rights movement. Hancock co-founded the Richmond chapter of the Urban League and wrote newspaper columns for the Associated Negro Press, advising his mostly black audience on how to get by in tough times while still taking principled stands against segregation. His work with the Virginia Interracial Commission and the Southern Regional Council also suggested his willingness to be both outspoken and pragmatic in the midst of the fight against segregation—a fight, he wrote, that must be won "if the Negro is to survive."
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:28:45 EST]]> /Fain_Sarah_Lee_1888-1962 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:23:37 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Fain_Sarah_Lee_1888-1962 Sarah Lee Fain was one of the first two women elected to serve in the Virginia General Assembly following ratification in 1920 of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which gave American women the right to vote. When she took her seat as a delegate from Norfolk in January 1924, Fain and her legislative colleague Helen Timmons Henderson, of Buchanan County, became pioneers whose presence in the Virginia State Capitol signaled the start of women's full participation in the political life of the state. Virginia changed slowly, however, and six more decades would pass before women served in the state's legislature in appreciable numbers.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:23:37 EST]]> /Equal_Suffrage_League_of_Virginia_1909-1920 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:21:59 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Equal_Suffrage_League_of_Virginia_1909-1920 The Equal Suffrage League of Virginia was an organization of white women dedicated to securing for women the right to vote. Aligned with the national woman suffrage movement, the league worked for more than ten years lobbying the public and the General Assembly alike, until its efforts paid off when three-fourths of the United States state legislatures ratified the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920. The league failed, however, to persuade the Virginia General Assembly, which did not vote to ratify until 1952.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:21:59 EST]]> /Desegregation_in_Public_Schools Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:15:19 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Desegregation_in_Public_Schools The desegregation of the public schools in Virginia began on February 2, 1959, and continued through early in the 1970s when the state government's attempts to resist desegregation ended. During this period, African Americans in Virginia pushed for desegregation primarily by filing lawsuits in federal courts throughout Virginia. This litigation was aimed at achieving court rulings forcing the state of Virginia and its local school districts to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 decision Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, mandating the desegregation of public schools. State and local officials, however, generally resisted efforts to bring about desegregation and utilized their political power to avoid and then minimize public school desegregation. Virginia's Indians, meanwhile, went without the benefit of any state-funded public education until 1963, almost a decade after Brown.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:15:19 EST]]> /Desegregation_in_Higher_Education Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:14:13 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Desegregation_in_Higher_Education The desegregation of higher education in Virginia was the result of a long legal and social process that began after the American Civil War (1861–1865) and did not end before the 1970s. When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that "separate but equal" public accommodations for blacks and whites were constitutional in the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson, the court established a sturdy legal basis for segregation. This ruling encouraged the Jim Crow era of legalized discrimination against blacks in the south. But the terminology of "separate but equal" eventually also created an opening for African Americans to demand educational opportunities and facilities equal to those available to whites. Educational opportunities for blacks were vastly inferior to whites, and segregation in higher education was entrenched in Virginia through World War II (1941–1945). But during the 1950s and 1960s, the first black students entered various graduate programs at the University of Virginia and the College of William and Mary, then undergraduate engineering programs at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and the University of Virginia, and finally general undergraduate programs at all historically white colleges and universities. In 1935 Alice Jackson failed to win admission to a graduate program at the University of Virginia, but Gregory Swanson, with the help of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and a ruling from a federal court, gained admission to the university's law school in 1950. Admittance into programs did not mean an immediate end to unfair and unequal treatment on campus, but by 1972 black students were able to enroll in Virginia in any curriculum and also live and eat in campus facilities.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:14:13 EST]]> /Defenders_of_State_Sovereignty_and_Individual_Liberties Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:12:49 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Defenders_of_State_Sovereignty_and_Individual_Liberties Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:12:49 EST]]> /Davis_Westmoreland_1859-1942 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:11:50 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Davis_Westmoreland_1859-1942 Westmoreland Davis was a Democratic governor of Virginia from 1918 to 1922. During his term as governor, Davis streamlined the state's fiscal operations and reformed its penal system. An agricultural reformer, he also cofounded the Virginia State Dairymen's Association in 1907 and represented the Progressive farm lobby through his monthly journal the Southern Planter.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:11:50 EST]]> /Cooperative_Education_Association Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:03:39 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Cooperative_Education_Association The Cooperative Education Association was organized in 1904 to advocate for public education reform in Virginia. The group was part of the larger, national Progressive movement, which generally pushed for workers' rights, women's rights, and more efficient government. The cooperative saw itself representing all citizens of Virginia, "whether living in the city or the country, whether white or black," and was an outgrowth of the Richmond Education Association, founded in 1900 by Lila Meade Valentine and dedicated to education reform. The idea behind the cooperative was to extend the group's successes in Richmond to the rest of the state.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:03:39 EST]]> /The_Confessions_of_Nat_Turner_by_William_Styron_1967 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:00:55 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/The_Confessions_of_Nat_Turner_by_William_Styron_1967 The Confessions of Nat Turner, a novel by William Styron, was published in 1967 and won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1968. The title character is based on the historical Nat Turner, a slave preacher and self-styled prophet who, in August 1831, led the only successful slave revolt in Virginia's history, which in just twelve hours left fifty-five white people in Southampton County dead. (A slave named Gabriel conspired to revolt in 1800, but his plans were discovered before he could carry them out.) The historical Nat Turner, in turn, is largely the product of "The Confessions of Nat Turner, as fully and voluntarily made to Thomas R. Gray," a pamphlet published shortly after Turner's trial and execution in November 1831. Although it played a crucial role in shaping perceptions of the event around the central figure of Turner, the pamphlet itself only reached a small portion of the reading public. The story awaited the Virginia-born Styron, who translated the historical record into a popular medium that commanded the full attention of the reading public and the national media. Despite its awards, however, that attention was not always positive. Published at the height of the Black Power movement and after a long summer of race riots in the United States, Styron's novel was labeled by some civil rights activists as racist, especially because of the author's depiction of Turner lusting after white women, one of whom he eventually kills.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:00:55 EST]]> /Chambers_Joseph_Lenoir_Jr_1891-1970 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 10:53:36 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Chambers_Joseph_Lenoir_Jr_1891-1970 Lenoir Chambers, newspaper editor and author, is best known for his opposition to the South's Massive Resistance to racial integration of the public schools, a position he maintained from early in 1954 to 1959. During his life and his career, he sought to educate readers about perceived injustices toward African Americans and workers throughout the South, and urged fairer treatment of them. When Virginia's political leaders closed the state's public schools in 1958 to avoid federally mandated school integration, Chambers wrote a series of articles in the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot that opposed the closings. His essays earned him a Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Editorial Writing in 1960.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 10:53:36 EST]]> /Cannon_James_1864-1944 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 10:52:19 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Cannon_James_1864-1944 James Cannon Jr. was an educator, a bishop of the southern Methodist Church, a leader of Prohibitionists in Virginia and the nation, and a political activist of such skill and combativeness that he became one of the most famous, and deeply controversial, American figures of the early twentieth century. Best known as a relentless advocate of Prohibition, Cannon drove the Virginia Anti-Saloon League's campaign for statewide Prohibition, adopted in 1914. He then served as the national Anti-Saloon League's principal Democratic lobbyist through the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1919 and the subsequent enforcement of national Prohibition during the 1920s. Cannon was a partisan Democrat, yet in 1928 he led a rebellion of southern Democrats against the presidential campaign of Alfred E. Smith, a wet, Catholic representative of the urban wing of the Democratic Party. Also an innovator and divisive figure within his church, Cannon, who became a bishop in 1918, directed worldwide missionary efforts and unsuccessfully pushed for the unification of the northern and southern branches of American Methodism. Charges of embezzlement, stock-market gambling, and adultery, fanned by Cannon's numerous enemies, dogged the bishop from 1929 until 1934 and diminished his influence thereafter.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 10:52:19 EST]]> /Byrd_Harry_Flood_Sr_1887-1966 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 10:47:14 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Byrd_Harry_Flood_Sr_1887-1966 Harry F. Byrd served as a Virginia state senator (1915–1925), governor (1926–1930), and United States senator (1933–1965), was the father of a U.S. senator, and for forty years led the Democratic political machine known as the Byrd Organization. By virtue of both his service and power, he was one of the most prominent Virginians of the twentieth century. But much of that power was wielded in mostly vain opposition to the New Deal's big-government programs and the civil rights legislation of the 1960s. As governor he instituted a popular downsizing of state government that increased efficiency, but the end of his career was marked by his now-infamous "massive resistance" to federally mandated school desegregation.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 10:47:14 EST]]> /Byrd_Organization Thu, 07 Apr 2011 10:46:00 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Byrd_Organization The Byrd Organization was a state political machine headed by Harry F. Byrd (1887–1966), a Democratic state senator, governor, and United States senator who, for more than forty years, used his power and influence to dominate the political life of Virginia. Inheriting an already tight party organization that for decades had emphasized small government and a limited franchise, Byrd prioritized fiscal conservatism—a policy he pithily dubbed "pay as you go"—and, on those grounds, opposed many of fellow Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal programs. Byrd and his organization are perhaps best known, however, for their fierce opposition to a 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that mandated the desegregation of public schools. The resulting Massive Resistance movement led to the shutdown of schools in Charlottesville, Front Royal, and Norfolk before the federal and state courts overturned state antidesegregation policies. It also effectively ended the organization's decades-long hold on power in the state.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 10:46:00 EST]]> /Battle_John_Stewart_1890-1972 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 10:34:41 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Battle_John_Stewart_1890-1972 John Stewart Battle was a member of the Virginia House of Delegates (1930–1934) and the Senate of Virginia (1934–1950), and served as governor of Virginia (1950–1954). A loyal Democrat in line with the Byrd Organization, the state machine run by U.S. senator Harry F. Byrd Sr., Battle overcame a spirited challenge by three fellow Democrats to win the 1949 gubernatorial primary. His greatest achievement as governor was a massive school construction program to accommodate the first wave of the baby boom. Battle gained national recognition when he addressed the 1952 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois, in an effort to prevent the Virginia delegation from losing its vote due to a disagreement over a loyalty oath. Although the U.S. Supreme Court did not announce its 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas—which mandated the desegregation of public schools—until after Battle left office, civil rights issues were emerging during his term. In a somewhat ironic end to his public service, Battle, a segregationist, was appointed by U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission in 1957.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 10:34:41 EST]]> /Barter_Theatre Thu, 07 Apr 2011 10:32:57 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Barter_Theatre The Barter Theatre, located in the Blue Ridge highlands of Abingdon, Virginia, was founded by Robert Porterfield in 1933 and designated the State Theater of Virginia in 1946. It is the longest-running professional Equity theater in the nation. (The Actors' Equity Association is a live-theater labor union.) Opening its doors in the midst of the Great Depression, Barter earned its name by allowing patrons to pay the admission price with produce, dairy products, or livestock. The shows were sometimes forced to compete with the noise that accompanied bartered livestock. On occasion, the theater also paid playwrights, such as Tennessee Williams and Thornton Wilder, Virginia hams for their works rather than standard royalties. George Bernard Shaw, a vegetarian, demanded to be paid in spinach. The theater expanded in 1961, opening a second stage across the street, and has earned a national reputation through touring companies and its association with many prominent and influential actors, including Gregory Peck, Ernest Borgnine, and Kevin Spacey. The Barter Theatre won a Tony Award in 1948 for Best Regional Theater.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 10:32:57 EST]]> /Anti-Saloon_League_of_Virginia Thu, 07 Apr 2011 10:25:48 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Anti-Saloon_League_of_Virginia The Anti-Saloon League of Virginia, established in 1901, led the movement that brought Prohibition to the state in 1916. While the state had established the Virginia Society for the Promotion of Temperance as early as October 1826, the league became a major force in Virginia politics, especially within the Democratic Party, in the first two decades of the twentieth century. An affiliate of the Anti-Saloon League of America, a national dry pressure group based in Ohio, the Virginia League gave political direction to the temperance beliefs of Protestant evangelicals, chiefly Baptists and Methodists.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 10:25:48 EST]]> /Almond_James_Lindsay_Jr_1898-1986 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 10:20:45 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Almond_James_Lindsay_Jr_1898-1986 J. Lindsay Almond Jr. was a governor of Virginia (1958–1962) whose name became synonymous with Massive Resistance, the legislative effort used to prevent school desegregation in light of the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, Supreme Court of the United States ruling in 1954. A Democrat and member of the Byrd Organization, Almond is famous for closing public schools in Charlottesville, Norfolk, and Front Royal in 1958 rather than integrating them. When the state and federal courts declared his actions illegal, Almond submitted, thus effectively ending the era of Massive Resistance to desegregation in Virginia.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 10:20:45 EST]]> /Alderman_Edwin_Anderson_1861-1931 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 10:19:41 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Alderman_Edwin_Anderson_1861-1931 Edwin Anderson Alderman was a noted educator, progressive reformer, and president of the University of North Carolina, Tulane University, and the University of Virginia, where he served as the school's first president from 1904 until his death in 1931. He brought to the University of Virginia a zeal for progressive reform, having campaigned in North Carolina and Louisiana for increased spending on public education and the creation of teacher-training schools, especially for women. In Charlottesville, Alderman established the Curry Memorial School of Education in 1905 and reorganized the university to emphasize efficiency and promote professional and technical instruction. The number of faculty doubled by 1907 and the university became more integrated with the educational life of the rest of the state. Alderman supported creating a coordinate college for women at the university, and even though the General Assembly opposed the idea, the university began admitting women to its graduate and professional programs in 1918. Alderman was a prolific fund-raiser, a well-known orator, and a close advisor to U.S. president Woodrow Wilson. In 1938, the Alderman Library at the University of Virginia was dedicated in Alderman's honor.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 10:19:41 EST]]> /Agnew_Ella_Graham_1871-1958 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 10:18:43 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Agnew_Ella_Graham_1871-1958 Ella G. Agnew was a prominent educator and social worker who advanced employment opportunities for women early in the 1900s long before there was a woman's liberation movement. She served as the first president of the Virginia Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs and worked in the national office of the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA). During the Great Depression, Agnew directed women's relief activities in Virginia.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 10:18:43 EST]]> /Pickett_LaSalle_Corbell_1843-1931 Tue, 05 Apr 2011 10:44:50 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Pickett_LaSalle_Corbell_1843-1931 LaSalle Corbell Pickett was a prolific author and lecturer, and the third wife of George E. Pickett, the Confederate general best known for his participation in the doomed frontal assault known as Pickett's Charge during the American Civil War (1861–1865). After her husband's death in 1875, she traveled the country to promote a highly romanticized version of his life and military career that was generally at odds with the historical record. George Pickett emerged from the war with a strained relationship with Robert E. Lee—whom he partly blamed for the destruction of his division at Gettysburg (1863)—and accused of war crimes. But in his wife's history, Pickett and His Men (1899), this not-always-competent soldier was transformed into the ideal Lost Cause hero, "gallant and graceful as a knight of chivalry riding to a tournament." This image largely stuck in the American consciousness, leaving historians to spend much of the next century attempting to separate Pickett from his myth.
Tue, 05 Apr 2011 10:44:50 EST]]> /Jackson_Luther_Porter_1892-1950 Thu, 31 Mar 2011 11:33:43 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Jackson_Luther_Porter_1892-1950 Luther Porter Jackson was an African American historian and one of Virginia's most important civil rights activists of the 1930s and 1940s. He was a professor of history at Virginia State College in Petersburg for nearly thirty years and authored Free Negro Labor and Property Holding in Virginia, 1830–1860 (1942), research that challenged stereotypes of antebellum blacks. Jackson was perhaps most important, however, as a political and social activist. He helped found the Petersburg League of Negro Voters in 1935, wrote a weekly newspaper column titled "Rights and Duties in a Democracy," and worked to challenge segregation in Richmond's public transit system.
Thu, 31 Mar 2011 11:33:43 EST]]> /Walker_Wyatt_Tee_1929- Tue, 08 Mar 2011 13:04:37 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Walker_Wyatt_Tee_1929- Tue, 08 Mar 2011 13:04:37 EST]]> /Secretariat_1970-1989 Tue, 23 Nov 2010 12:56:01 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Secretariat_1970-1989 Secretariat was an American thoroughbred considered one of the greatest of all American racehorses. Best known for winning in 1973 horse racing's Triple Crown—the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes—Secretariat was the first horse to accomplish that feat in twenty-five years and one of only eleven horses ever to do so. Twenty years after his death, Secretariat still holds the Kentucky Derby track record.
Tue, 23 Nov 2010 12:56:01 EST]]> /National_D-Day_Memorial Tue, 23 Nov 2010 12:01:14 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/National_D-Day_Memorial The National D-Day Memorial is a congressionally approved national war memorial in Bedford, Virginia, honoring the American GIs who participated in the invasion of France at Normandy on June 6, 1944, during World War II (1939–1945). Dedicated on June 6, 2001, by United States president George W. Bush and receiving as many as 100,000 visitors per year, the memorial is remarkable for its stone arch that rises nearly forty-five feet in the air. The structure's six components correspond, often in directly representational ways, to the planning and execution of Operation Overlord, the largest invasion in history. Conceived by Roanoke native and D-Day veteran J. Robert "Bob" Slaughter, the memorial is located in Bedford partly for symbolic reasons: the Virginia town lost nineteen of its men engaged that day, all members of Company A, 29th Infantry Division, possibly the largest per capita loss of any town in America on that day. (Four more Bedford soldiers died later in the campaign.) Although Slaughter had originally envisioned something modest, the project turned into a $25 million colossus that resulted in the memorial foundation's bankruptcy in 2002 and two federal fraud indictments against its executive director, Richard B. Burrow. Two trials ended in hung juries, and charges against Burrow were dismissed in October 2004.
Tue, 23 Nov 2010 12:01:14 EST]]> /Highway_Bond_Referendum_1923 Tue, 23 Nov 2010 10:58:45 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Highway_Bond_Referendum_1923 The 1923 Highway Bond Referendum was defeated by voters after a long and bruising battle in the General Assembly where state senator Harry F. Byrd Sr. emerged as a real political force. At issue was how to pay for much-needed road improvement. While bonds were popular at first, Byrd had managed to muster a fierce and stubborn opposition, arguing that a gas tax, instead of bonds, would allow the state to adopt a "pay-as-you-go" policy that was more fiscally responsible. Byrd's behind-the-scenes machinations foreshadowed the political powerhouse he was about to become—as Virginia's governor, as a U.S. senator, and as head of the Byrd Organization, a statewide Democratic Party machine.
Tue, 23 Nov 2010 10:58:45 EST]]> /Fort_Lee Tue, 23 Nov 2010 10:37:44 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Fort_Lee Fort Lee, located near Petersburg, Virginia, serves as the headquarters of the U.S. Army's Combined Arms Support Command and Quartermaster Corps. Since 1917, it has trained and educated thousands of soldiers for service in every major conflict and continues to develop future combat systems and doctrine for the all of the Army's logistics branches.
Tue, 23 Nov 2010 10:37:44 EST]]> /Eggleston_Joseph_Dupuy_Jr_1867-1953 Tue, 23 Nov 2010 09:41:12 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Eggleston_Joseph_Dupuy_Jr_1867-1953 Joseph D. Eggleston was a pioneering educator who served as Virginia's first elected superintendant of public schools and made significant advances in Virginia education. He successfully increased funding for both public secondary schools and public universities (Virginia high schools grew under his tenure from 75 to 448), increased teachers' salaries, and lengthened school terms. Eggleston also served as the seventh president of Virginia Polytechnic Institute (Virginia Tech), where his most ambitious fiscal projects were stalled by U.S. involvement in World War I (1914–1918) and a more wary state legislature. In 1919 he was named president of his alma mater, Hampden-Sydney College, where he remained for twenty years, helping the institution to liberalize its curriculum and to weather the effects of the Great Depression.
Tue, 23 Nov 2010 09:41:12 EST]]> /Carson_William_Edward_1870-1942 Tue, 23 Nov 2010 08:51:35 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Carson_William_Edward_1870-1942 William E. Carson, chairman of the Commission on Conservation and Development, was a Virginia businessman whose friendship with Harry F. Byrd elevated him to political prominence in Virginia in the 1920s. Disagreements with the more-powerful Byrd over commission matters and his own political ambitions, however, led to a falling out. Though Byrd declined to renew Carson's commission appointment in 1934, Carson remained chairman of the Democratic committee in the Seventh District until 1940.
Tue, 23 Nov 2010 08:51:35 EST]]> /Byrd_Richard_E_1888-1957 Tue, 23 Nov 2010 08:40:59 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Byrd_Richard_E_1888-1957 Richard E. Byrd was a naval aviator and explorer of both the Arctic and Antarctica who became famous in 1926 as the first man credited with flying to the North Pole. During World War I (1914–1918), he conducted antisubmarine patrols in the North Atlantic and became a pioneer in navigating long distances, both on water and in the air. Byrd's desire to test navigational equipment in extreme climates took him to Greenland in 1925, and from there he pushed north using a sun compass and shortwave aerial radio transmissions. His roundtrip, aerial expedition to the North Pole, funded by wealthy American industrialists, was completed in about sixteen hours on May 9, 1926, and earned Byrd international fame. His pioneering feat has long been questioned, at times persuasively, by skeptical scientists who claimed that he could not have made the trip in such a short amount of time. Later in his career, Byrd established the United States presence in Antarctica and flew to the South Pole.
Tue, 23 Nov 2010 08:40:59 EST]]> /Falwell_Jerry_1933-2007 Tue, 28 Sep 2010 11:07:13 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Falwell_Jerry_1933-2007 Jerry Falwell was a fundamentalist Christian pastor and the founder of the Thomas Road Baptist Church and Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. Best known for his key role in mobilizing the Christian Right into a formidable power in United States politics, Falwell founded the Moral Majority in 1979, a national political organization that emphasized a commitment to a "pro-family" agenda. The Moral Majority achieved prominence very quickly when in 1980 there was a significant surge in evangelical conservative support for the Republican Party nominee for U.S. president, Ronald Reagan, and for Republican, or GOP (Grand Old Party) candidates for the U.S. Congress. Many observers credited Falwell with having played the leading role in energizing these voters to support Reagan and the GOP. After Reagan's landslide win and the Republican successes in the congressional races as well, Falwell and the Moral Majority became prominent, though controversial, fixtures on the U.S. political scene.
Tue, 28 Sep 2010 11:07:13 EST]]> /Freeman_Douglas_Southall_1886-1953 Mon, 20 Sep 2010 14:17:11 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Freeman_Douglas_Southall_1886-1953 Douglas Southall Freeman was a biographer, a newspaper editor, a nationally renowned military analyst, and a pioneering radio broadcaster. He won the Pulitzer Prize twice: the first, in 1935, for his four-volume biography of the Confederate general Robert E. Lee; and the second, posthumously in 1958, for his six-volume biography of George Washington, with a seventh volume written by John Alexander Carroll and Mary Wells Ashworth after Freeman's death in 1953. The son of a Confederate veteran, Freeman is best known as a historian of the American Civil War (1861–1865) and, in particular, of the high command of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. His description of Lee, Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, and their compatriots as "men of principles unimpeachable, of valour indescribable" for some has suggested that his work was influenced by the Lost Cause view of the war that was in part founded by his former neighbor, Jubal A. Early. In reality, Freeman's admiration for the Confederates never influenced his historical conclusions.
Mon, 20 Sep 2010 14:17:11 EST]]> /Allen_Floyd_1856-1913 Thu, 16 Sep 2010 12:56:23 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Allen_Floyd_1856-1913 Floyd Allen was the central figure in one of the most sensational and bizarre incidents in Virginia criminal and legal history, the so-called "Hillsville Massacre." In the great Carroll County shootout in Hillsville on March 14, 1912, a judge, a sheriff, a commonwealth's attorney, a juror, and a spectator were all killed by shots fired by Allen and others after Allen was convicted of assault. Allen and several members of his family immediately fled the courtroom but were later captured and convicted of murder. Allen and his youngest son, Claude Swanson Allen, were both executed for their crimes.
Thu, 16 Sep 2010 12:56:23 EST]]> /Dan_River_Mills Wed, 15 Sep 2010 10:58:57 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Dan_River_Mills Dan River Mills in Danville, Virginia, is a historic manufacturer of apparel fabrics and home fashion products such as bedding. Opened in 1882 as the Riverside Cotton Mills, the company grew to become the largest textile firm in the South. The mills were a prime target for union leaders, who reasoned that they could organize textile plants across the region if they could crack the strategically located Dan River Mills. In 1930 and 1951, major strikes occurred at the mills; both ended in defeat for the workers. From the 1970s, employment levels at the Virginia firm fell dramatically as it struggled to compete with cheap imported textiles, competition that eventually brought the historic firm to final dissolution in 2006.
Wed, 15 Sep 2010 10:58:57 EST]]> /Hurricane_Camille_August_1969 Thu, 09 Sep 2010 13:00:10 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Hurricane_Camille_August_1969 Hurricane Camille arrived in Virginia on the night of August 19, 1969, one of only three category five storms ever to make landfall in the United States since record-keeping began. One of the worst natural disasters in Virginia's history, the storm produced what meteorologists at the time guessed might be the most rainfall "theoretically possible." As it swept through Virginia overnight, it seemed to catch authorities by surprise. Communication networks were not in place or were knocked out, leaving floods and landslides to trap residents as they slept. Hurricane Camille cost Virginia 113 lives lost and $116 million in damages. It also served as a lesson that inland flooding could be as great a danger as coastal flooding during a hurricane.
Thu, 09 Sep 2010 13:00:10 EST]]> /Wreck_of_the_Old_97 Thu, 09 Sep 2010 11:54:12 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Wreck_of_the_Old_97 The wreck of the Old 97 occurred on September 27, 1903, when the Southern Railway freight train called the Fast Mail (or "Old 97") left the tracks and crashed at the Stillhouse Trestle outside Danville, Virginia, killing eleven people. The accident became a sensation, with thousands of spectators at the scene, newspaper stories, and even a series of musical ballads, the most popular of which became a hit on the country music charts in 1924.
Thu, 09 Sep 2010 11:54:12 EST]]> /Robb_Charles_S_1939- Thu, 09 Sep 2010 09:12:29 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Robb_Charles_S_1939- Charles S. "Chuck" Robb served as lieutenant governor (1978–1982) and governor of Virginia (1982–1986) and for two terms as U.S. senator (1989–2001). The son-in-law of U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson, Robb entered Virginia politics as a "celebrity" without the customary résumé of serving in lower office. A Democrat, Robb was instrumental in reviving his party's fortunes in the state after a period of Republican dominance. His election in 1981 ushered in the first of three consecutive Democratic governorships. A moderate, Robb also played a role in national politics, moving his party to the center but never seeking national office himself. His promising career was tarnished by a series of scandals and he was ultimately defeated for reelection in 2000.
Thu, 09 Sep 2010 09:12:29 EST]]> /Scott_Robert_Cortez_Bobby_1947- Tue, 07 Sep 2010 12:08:41 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Scott_Robert_Cortez_Bobby_1947- Congressman Robert C. "Bobby" Scott has represented Virginia's Third District for eight terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. Elected to his first term in 1992, Scott was the first American of Filipino descent and only the second African American to represent Virginia in the U.S. Congress since John M. Langston left office in 1891. Before being elected to the House, he had served in both the Virginia House of Delegates (1978–1982) and the Virginia Senate (1982–1992). A moderate Democrat, Scott has chaired the Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee since 2006.
Tue, 07 Sep 2010 12:08:41 EST]]> /Pollard_John_Garland_1871-1937 Fri, 28 May 2010 15:13:26 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Pollard_John_Garland_1871-1937 John Garland Pollard was a progressive Democrat who served as delegate to the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1901–1902, attorney general of Virginia (1914–1918), and governor (1930–1934). Handpicked by Harry F. Byrd Sr. to be his gubernatorial successor, Pollard left a legacy as governor that was clouded by the fact that he took office on the eve of the Great Depression. While independent-minded, Pollard was never able to get fully out from under the thumb of Byrd (supposedly he would remark while patting his belly that he had become so rotund by "swallowing the Byrd machine"). Byrd's control over Pollard and Virginia's political environment was particularly evident in the initiative to legalize alcohol when Byrd went around Pollard to senator William M. Tuck to gather the General Assembly together in order to push through a state referendum to repeal Prohibition and establish the state-run Alcoholic Beverage Control Board. Outside of politics, Pollard was an educator and member of several public and philanthropic commissions and organizations. As a practicing attorney, he wrote Pollard's Code of Virginia, which became an often-consulted reference work on the laws of Virginia. He also served briefly as a professor of constitutional law and history at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg. In 1936 Pollard helped to found the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, the first state art museum in the United States, and served as president of the museum's board of directors.
Fri, 28 May 2010 15:13:26 EST]]> /Dalton_John_N_1931-1986 Thu, 20 May 2010 15:26:36 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Dalton_John_N_1931-1986 John N. Dalton, a successful lawyer, businessman, and farmer, was a member of the Virginia House of Delegates (1966–1972) and the Senate of Virginia (1972–1973), and served as lieutenant governor (1974–1978) and as governor (1978–1982). He was the first Republican lieutenant governor of the twentieth century. His term as governor came during a period of dramatic realignment in which the Republican Party, long overshadowed by the Democratic Byrd Organization, became competitive in state elections for the first time in nearly a century. In fact, Dalton's rapid climb from state legislator to governor paralleled Virginia's transition from a one-party, Democratic state, typical of the "Solid South," to a competitive, two-party system. The third in a trio of Republican governors of Virginia during the 1970s, Dalton stressed economic development, conservative fiscal management, and Republican party-building.
Thu, 20 May 2010 15:26:36 EST]]> /Martin_Thomas_Staples_1847-1919 Thu, 20 May 2010 15:12:58 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Martin_Thomas_Staples_1847-1919 Thomas Staples Martin was a railroad attorney, a longtime U.S. senator from Virginia (serving from 1895 until 1919), and an architect of the state Democratic Party machine that during his time was known as the Martin Organization. A quiet, behind-the-scenes political player, Martin rose through the party ranks largely due to his influence with powerful railroad interests. Under the leadership of Martin's mentor, John S. Barbour Jr., Democrats reestablished control of state politics that, since Reconstruction (1865–1877), had been in the hands of Republicans and Readjusters. Then, in 1893, in a huge and unexpected upset, Martin defeated former Confederate general and Virginia governor Fitzhugh Lee for election to Barbour's U.S. Senate seat, allowing him to take control of the party and, to a large extent, the state. Accused by his critics of bribery and corruption, Martin stayed in power and managed to rise to the position of Senate Majority Leader at least in part because of his pragmatic willingness to forge coalitions between the competing conservative and progressive wings of the Democratic Party. As a result, Martin's political machine and its successor, the Byrd Organization, dominated Virginia politics until the 1960s.
Thu, 20 May 2010 15:12:58 EST]]> /Sandy_T_O_1857-1919 Mon, 12 Oct 2009 09:54:00 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Sandy_T_O_1857-1919 T. O. Sandy was Virginia's earliest agricultural extension agent. A farmer, scientist, and teacher, he opened the state's first extension office in Burkeville in 1907, serving the residents in surrounding counties with practical agricultural advice. In 1914, Virginia Polytechnic Institute (now Virginia Tech) in Blacksburg assumed the administration of the statewide program. Sandy, who had briefly attended Virginia Tech, coordinated Virginia's extension efforts until his retirement in 1917. During Sandy's tenure as extension agent, farming practices and attitudes toward scientific agriculture in Virginia significantly improved.
Mon, 12 Oct 2009 09:54:00 EST]]> /Woodson_Carter_G_1875-1950 Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:44:06 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Woodson_Carter_G_1875-1950 Carter G. Woodson was a historian and founder of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, the Journal of Negro History, and "Negro History Week." Now known as the "Father of Black History" because of his efforts to promote African American history, Woodson wrote pioneering social histories chronicling the lives of black people at a time when mainstream white scholars denied that African Americans were worthy of historical study. Much of his work was based on public records, letters, speeches, folklore, and autobiographies, materials that were previously ignored. Woodson also used an interdisciplinary approach that combined anthropology, sociology, and history. From 1915 until 1947, he published four monographs, five textbooks, five edited collections of documents, five sociological studies, and thirteen articles. He pioneered in interpretations of slavery and Africa, which were adopted by mainstream historical scholars late in the 1950s. Among the works for which he is best known is The Mis-Education of the Negro (1933), which is still in print seventy-five years later.
Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:44:06 EST]]> /Modern_Environmental_History_of_Virginia Thu, 08 Jan 2009 14:13:24 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Modern_Environmental_History_of_Virginia Virginia's modern history has been shaped by and has in turn shaped its nonhuman natural environment. In one way, nature has been a historical actor changing Virginia: the state's climate, geology, waterways, fisheries, wildlife population, flora and fauna, and soil content have provided the conditions for economic, cultural, and recreational possibilities across the state. In another way, Virginians have acted to change land-use patterns, increase waste flows into rivers and other habitats, and intensify demands for energy, putting increased pressure on the environment during the twentieth century. By century's end, new transportation and energy-producing technologies, more scientific knowledge about interrelated ecosystems, and an accompanying shift in values about environmental features led Virginians to perceive their environments in ways differing significantly from their nineteenth-century predecessors. Moreover, the state's modern history serves as a representative example of the complex intermingling between culture and nature in America's environmental history.
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