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 /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]]> /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]]> /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]]> /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]]> /Disfranchisement Thu, 04 Apr 2013 15:57:43 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Disfranchisement Thu, 04 Apr 2013 15:57:43 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]]> /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]]> /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]]> /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]]> /_Proclamation_to_the_People_of_Maryland_by_Robert_E_Lee_1862 Fri, 08 Jun 2012 13:30:41 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/_Proclamation_to_the_People_of_Maryland_by_Robert_E_Lee_1862 In a proclamation addressed "To the People of Maryland" and issued from Frederick, Maryland, on September 8, 1862, Confederate general Robert E. Lee justifies the Army of Northern Virginia's presence in the state, which had not seceded from the Union. Nine days later, Lee's army was stopped at the Battle of Antietam.
Fri, 08 Jun 2012 13:30:41 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]]> /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]]> /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]]> /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]]> /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]]> /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]]> /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]]> /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]]> /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]]> /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]]> /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]]> /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]]> /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]]> /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]]> /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]]> /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]]> /Giovanni_Nikki_1943- Tue, 23 Nov 2010 10:48:21 EST http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Giovanni_Nikki_1943- Nikki Giovanni is a poet, civil rights activist, and outspoken social critic—particularly on issues of gender and race—who uses her poetry as a vehicle for political commentary. Her self-published first volume of poems, Black Feeling, Black Talk (1968), declared an affinity to the Black Power of Malcolm X and dismissed the nonviolence of Martin Luther King Jr. "We ain't got to prove we can die," she wrote. "We got to prove we can kill." While her militancy has tempered with the years, her commitment to the importance of individual black voices in opposition to what she perceives to be the powerful and corrupting influence of the "white race" has not wavered. Giovanni's fame and influence, meanwhile, have grown. Currently, she is a University Distinguished Professor of English at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (or Virginia Tech), where she spoke prominently following the April 2007 shooting in which a Tech student murdered thirty-two people.
Tue, 23 Nov 2010 10:48:21 EST]]>