We begin our reviews of titles related to Civil Rights in Virginia 1945-1970 with an overview of political conditions in Virginia following World War II. The classic “Southern Politics” studies Virginia along with ten other Southern states, and “Harry Byrd of Virginia” analyses Virginia’s central political figure of the time.
“Parting the Waters” analyzes Martin Luther King, Jr.’s contribution to the black freedom movement, followed by two very different Virginian responses by a conservative in “James J. Kilpatrick” and a liberal in “The Desegregated Heart”. Ten additional titles are noted which are used in surveys of Virginia history.
For more book reviews at TheVirginiaHistorian.com in this historical era addressing other topics, see the webpage for Gilded Age, New South, Civil Rights, New Dominion (1889-present). General surveys of Virginia History can be found at Virginia History Surveys. Other Virginia history divided by topics and time periods can be found at the webpage Books and Reviews.
These titles are all used in bibliographies found in surveys of Virginia history of scholarly merit that are currently used in Virginia university history departments. Additional insights are used from articles in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, the Journal of Southern History and the Journal of American History.
Southern Politics
V. O. Key Jr. with Alexander Heard wrote Southern Politics in State and Nation in 1949. It is now available online new and used. This classic description of eleven states of the South describes the political systems, their organization, financing, nominations, primaries and elections. While it concludes Virginia’s Byrd Organization was not corrupt at the end of the 1940s, it was a 1700s one party machine. Party subdivisions were not the same as a two-party system, as the whites of the “black-belt” counties dominated the state to ensure white supremacy. While poorer whites supported racial accommodation in some degree, most Virginians white and black had been deprived of political voice at the ballot box.
The primary tool of suffrage restriction was not the poll tax but the literacy test. However by 1950 the Supreme Court had begun to unravel the southern single party monopolies by outlawing the white only primary, creating a crisis among white supremacists.
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*Michael R. Gardner wrote Harry Truman and Civil Rights: Moral Courage and Political Risks in 2002. It is out of print but available online new and used. Learn more to buy “Harry Truman and Civil Rights” on Amazon.com for your bookshelf.
*Robert Mann wrote The Walls of Jericho: Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Richard Russell, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in 1996. It is out of print but available online new and used. Learn more to buy “Walls of Jericho” on Amazon.com for your bookshelf.
Harry Byrd of Virginia
Ronald L. Heinemann wrote Harry Byrd of Virginia in 1996. It is available online at the University of Virginia Press. In 1910 Harry Byrd Sr. entered politics while pursuing his role as publisher of the Winchester Star and tending to his expanding apple orchards. He belonged to the Democratic Party Organization, believing in government-sponsored farm to market roads and policies allowing private business initiative, with few regulations and low taxation. A restricted electorate of white males paying poll taxes or white males who had their poll taxes paid by the Byrd Organization sustained a pay-as-you-go philosophy with few public services, including limited educational services. Byrd’s dominance of Virginia politics, governors and state legislature, continued from 1925 to 1965.
Elected Governor in 1925 he got high marks for stressing honesty, economy and efficiency in state government and maintaining good state bond credit through the Depression. Elected U.S. Senator in 1933, he continued to run the state Democratic Organization, and made a career of opposing reform efforts by national Democratic presidents from FDR to LBJ. The Organization’s stranglehold on Virginia politics was broken with its miscalculated Massive Resistance to racially integrated schooling.
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*J. Harvie Wilkinson III wrote Harry Byrd and the Changing Face of Virginia Politics, 1945-1966 in 1968. It is out of print but available online used. Learn more to buy “Harry Byrd and the Changing Face of Virginia Politics” on Amazon.com for your bookshelf.
*William B. Crawley Jr. wrote Bill Tuck: A Political Life in Harry Byrd’s Virginia in 1978. It is out of print but available online used. Learn more to buy “Bill Tuck” on Amazon.com for your bookshelf.
*Ben Beagle and Ozzie Osbourne wrote J. Lindsay Almond: Virginia’s Reluctant Rebel in 1984. It is out of print but available online used. Learn more to buy “J. Lindsay Almond” on Amazon.com for your bookshelf.
Parting the Waters
Taylor Branch wrote Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63 in 1988. It is now available on Kindle and online new and used. In the first of a two volume biographical study, this book celebrates Martin Luther King Jr.’s contributions to the modern black freedom movement in the watershed post-WWII years. It begins with the pioneering role of a group of pioneering black preachers and academic theologians. Branch acknowledges the courage of outspoken black dissenters during the Cold War era. King was drawn to both movement “martyrs” and aspiring black “rulers”.
The black Baptist churches had developed an independent tradition of Christian social criticism which was bitterly opposed by fundamentalist leaders of the National Baptist Convention who opposed merging Christian and political goals. White liberal leaders on the national scene consistently misunderstood the political implications of mass black activism, and Branch is critical of the Kennedy Administration and its judicial appointments in the South.
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*Michael Dennis wrote Luther P. Jackson and a Life for Civil Rights in 2004. It is out of print but available online new and used. Learn more to buy “Luther P. Jackson” on Amazon.com for your bookshelf.
*Earl Lewis wrote In Their Own Interests: Race, Class, and Power in Twentieth-Century Norfolk, Virginia in 1991. It is out of print but available online new and used. Learn more to buy “In Their Own Interests” on Amazon.com for your bookshelf.
*Bruce Adelson wrote Brushing Back Jim Crow: The Integration of Minor-League Baseball in the American South in 1999 and reprinted in 2007. It is out of print but available online new and used. Learn more to buy “Brushing Back Jim Crow” on Amazon.com for your bookshelf.
James J. Kilpatrick
William P. Hustwit wrote James J. Kilpatrick: Salesman for Segregation in 2013. It is now available on Kindle and online new and used. Hustwit analyzes how Oklahoman native Kilpatrick as the editor of the Richmond News Leader at first promoted Virginia’s massive resistance based on states’ rights rather than racial stereotypes, then repackaged his world view opposing “reverse racism” and trumpeting strict construction constitutionalism. While famously consorting with Harry F. Byrd at the initiation of massive resistance, Kilpatrick abandoned the policy after two months of closed schools.
Kilpatrick authored The Sovereign States avoiding blatant racism, and served as vice chairman of the Coordinating Committee for Fundamental American Freedoms that was established to defeat President Kennedy’s Civil Rights Bill. As a conservative columnist, Kilpatrick wrote for the National Review, Nation’s Business, and he was syndicated in 500 newspapers as a columnist for the Washington Star. A television career began with the talk show Agronski and Company that was extended with the “Point/Counterpoint” debates on CBS’s Sixty Minutes.
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The Desegregated Heart
Sarah Patton Boyle wrote The Desegregated Heart: A Virginian’s Stand in Time of Transition in 1962. It is now available on Kindle. Mrs. Boyle was the daughter of a First Family of Virginia whose faith led her to believe that Virginia aristocracy would embrace racial equality on the basis of basic Christian tenets. She began her journey into desegregation as the wife of a UVA professor by advocating for the admission of Gregory Swanson into the Law School there in 1950.
The result was social ostracism, threats and cross burnings on her lawn. Though publishing an article in the Saturday Evening Post titled “Southerners will Like Integration”, and mentoring from the black newspaper editor Thomas J. Sellers, she found no emotional support in the African American community. She retreated into a religious mysticism, appalled at a constitutional referendum to circumvent Supreme Court rulings for school integration passed by a two-thirds majority.
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*Doug Smith wrote Whirlwind: The Godfather of Black Tennis – the Life and Times of Dr. Robert Walter Johnson in 2004. It is now available online. Learn more to buy “Whirlwind” on Amazon.com for your bookshelf.
*Steve Sullivan wrote Remember This Titan: The Bill Yoast Story, Lessons Learned from a Celebrated Coach’s Journey in 2005. It is now available on Kindle and online new and used. Learn more to buy “Remember This Titan” on Amazon.com for your bookshelf.