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 /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]]> /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]]> /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]]> /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]]> /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]]> /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]]> /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.
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