We begin our look at Jim Crow New South Virginia 1900-1945 with “Struggle for Mastery” investigating the disenfranchisement of the African American. “Managing White Supremacy” shows the role of Anglo Saxon Clubs and the redefinition of one-drop racism. “Harry Byrd” explains the forty-year dominance of the Democratic Organization under one man, while “Norfolk” surveys the entire period including 1900-1945 focusing on race relations in a major Virginia city.
“Southern Strategies” describes the efforts of Virginia women white and black to secure woman suffrage, and the white women who organized as anti-suffrage. The review introduces a bibliography of seven titles related to woman suffrage and woman’s higher education in Virginia, white and black.
Additional titles of interest may be found in this Black History Month at the blog series “African Americans in Antebellum Virginia”. Part One looks at the slaves themselves and the slave regime, Part Two considers both domestic slavery and the largest free black community, Part Three addresses resistance to slavery in both rebellion and escape, and Part Four represents family life and three biographies.
For book reviews at The Virginia Historian.com in this historical period 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.
Struggle for Mastery
Michael Perman wrote Struggle for Mastery: Disfranchisement in the South, 1888-1908 in 2001. It is available on Kindle and online new. Perman explains how Southern states took the vote from the Afro-American in the name of white supremacy. Beginning in 1890, they effectively gutted the Fifteenth Amendment. The reasons differed from state to state. Perman logically treats each state independently, while also comparing various forces for disenfranchisement, the powerful enactors of each state, and the out-maneuvered dissidents.
The first phase of extra-constitutional means focused on the black man alone such as the poll tax and the whites-only primary. In a second phase, these were extended constitutionally to exclude half of the whites who were the poorer sorts. The “ignorant and vicious” of both races in the South had flirted with Populism and so threatened the newly established New South order. Only after the massive electoral exclusions could there be a “solid South” of one party rule.
Learn more to buy “Struggle for Mastery” at Amazon for your bookshelf.
*Wythe Holt wrote Virginia’s Constitutional Convention of 1901-1902 in 1990. It is out of print but may be available in your central library and by interlibrary loan.
*Raymond H. Pulley wrote Old Virginia Restored: An Interpretation of the Progressive Impulse, 1870-1930 in 1968. It is out of print, but may be found in your central library or by interlibrary loan.
*William Larsen wrote Montague of Virginia: The Making of a Southern Progressive in 1965. It is out of print but available online used. Learn more to buy “Montague of Virginia” on Amazon for your bookshelf.
Managing White Supremacy
Douglas Smith wrote Managing White Supremacy: Race, Politics, and Citizenship in Jim Crow Virginia in 2002. It is available on Kindle and online in paperback. Smith examines race relations in Virginia over the first half of the 20th century. In the early decades, there was a façade of good race relations among paternalistic whites and the “better class” of blacks. While Klu Klux Klan violence was anathema, overzealous white supremacists such as John Plecker turned to Anglo-Saxon Clubs to reinforce the color line. The 1924 Racial Integrity Act redefined race with a “one drop rule” and outlawed racial intermarriage.
Smith describes the challenges to the segregation system by both whites and blacks. Despite the protests of the black Virginia press led by the Richmond Planet and the Norfolk Journal and Guide, along with notable whites such as Louis Jaffe of the Norfolk Virginia-Pilot, the 1926 Public Assemblages Act mandated racial segregation in all public places.
By the late 1930s and early 1940s, there was more Virginian black initiative in bring about social change, using court cases to challenge Richmond’s racial segregation ordinances, library segregation in Alexandria, unequal teacher salaries in Norfolk and exclusion from the University of Virginia. Leaders such as Oliver W. Hill and Samuel W. Tucker demanded rights as citizens. Although white Virginians such as Virginius Dabney of the Richmond Times-Dispatch recognized the inequalities that had grown up under “separate but equal”, it took African-American leadership to attain an end a legal regime of second-class citizenship.
Learn more to buy “Managing White Supremacy” on Amazon for your bookshelf.
*J. Morgan Kousser wrote The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of the One-Party South, 1880-1910 in 1974. It is out of print but may be available in your central library and by interlibrary loan.
*William G. Thomas wrote Lawyering for the Railroad: Business, Law, and Power in the New South in 1999. It is out of print but available online new and used. Learn more to buy “Lawyering for the Railroad” on Amazon for your bookshelf.
Harry Byrd
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. “Harry Byrd is available online at University of Virginia Press and from booksellers new and used on Amazon.
*Jack Temple Curtis wrote Westmoreland Davis: Virginia Planter Politician, 1859-1942. It is out of print but available online used. Learn more to buy “Westmoreland Davis” on Amazon for your bookshelf.
*Allen W. Moger wrote Virginia: Bourbonism to Byrd, 1870-1925 in 1968. It is out of print but available online used. Learn more to buy “Virginia: Bourbonism to Byrd” on Amazon for your bookshelf.
*Robert A. Hohner wrote Prohibition and Politics: The Life of Bishop James Cannon, Jr. in 1999. It is out of print but available online used. Learn more to buy “Prohibition and Politics” on Amazon for your bookshelf.
Norfolk
Thomas C. Parramore, Peter C. Stewart and Tommy L. Bogger wrote Norfolk: The First Four Centuries in 1994, reprinted in 2000. It is available online at the University of Virginia Press. In a systematic effort to place race relations at the center of the Norfolk story, the authors begin with a section on the region’s before town settlement. The book is divided roughly from those beginnings to 1815, from the War of 1812 to 1914, and from World War I to the present (1990s).
With a focus on individuals and groups of people who have made up the city’s history, each of the short chapters begins with a vignette, then follows with a discussion of the period context of political, social, economic and military history. For each chapter, there is a summary of important additions to cultural institutions and local government activities. “Norfolk” is available online at the University of Virginia Press and from booksellers new and used at Amazon.
*Marie Tyler-McGraw wrote At the Falls: Richmond, Virginia and Its People in 1994. It is out of print but available online used. Learn more to buy “At the Falls” at Amazon for your bookshelf.
*Andrew Buni wrote The Negro in Virginia Politics, 1902-1965 in 1967. It is out of print but available online new and used. Learn more to buy “The Negro in Virginia Politics” at Amazon for your bookshelf.
*Earl Lewis wrote In Their Own Interest: 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 Interest” at Amazon for your bookshelf.
Southern Strategies
Elna C. Green wrote Southern Strategies: Southern Women and the Woman Suffrage Question in 1997. It is available on Kindle and online new and used. Green examined the anti-suffrage and suffrage movement among women in the Southern states. Only four initially ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, Virginia did so in 1952. Women were divided into three contending forces: the suffragists working for either or national or state constitutional amendments, states’ rights suffragists for state constitutional amendments only, and the anti-suffragists. Most in the South eschewed militancy with some exceptions, and occasionally states’ rights suffragists allied with anti-suffragists about proposed legislation.
Southern suffragists tended to be more urban-oriented and middle class, while Anti-suffragists were of the planter class and industrial interests that had combined to disenfranchise blacks constitutionally throughout the South. Most middle class black women were suffragists and loyal to the Republican Party.
Learn more to buy “Southern Strategies” at Amazon for your bookshelf.
*Walter Russell Bowie wrote Sunrise in the South: The Life of Mary-Cooke Branch Munford in 1942. It is out of print but may be available at your central library or by interlibrary loan.
*Suzanne Lebsock wrote “A Share of Honor”: Virginia Women, 1600-1945 in 1984. It is out of print but available online used. Learn more to buy “A Share of Honor” at Amazon for your bookshelf.
*Amy Thompson McCandless wrote The Past in the Present: Women’s Higher Education in the Twentieth-Century American South in 1999. It is out of print but available online new and used. Learn more to buy “Past in the Present” at Amazon for your bookshelf.
*Edward Alvey Jr. wrote History of Mary Washington College, 1908-1972 in 1974. It is out of print but available online used. Learn more to buy “Mary Washington College” at Amazon for your bookshelf.
*Raymond C. Dingledine Jr. wrote Madison College: The First Fifty Years, 1908-1958 in 1959. It is out of print but available online used. Learn more to buy “Madison College” at Amazon for your bookshelf.
*Susan H. Goodson, et al wrote The College of William and Mary: A History in 1993. It is out of print but is available online used. Learn more to buy “William and Mary” at Amazon for your bookshelf.
*Edgar Toppin wrote Loyal Sons and Daughters: Virginia State University, 1882-1992 in 1992. It is out of print but may be available in your central library or by interlibrary loan.