VCU Libraries make first-hand accounts of Virginia’s civil rights history available on the web

RICHMOND, Va. (Jan. 12, 2006) – First-hand accounts of Virginians who contributed to significant social change while struggling against segregation come to life in videotaped recollections now available online through the libraries of Virginia Commonwealth University.

Voices of Freedom, a series of videotaped interviews with 12 veterans of Virginia’s civil rights movement, may be viewed at a Web site made available by VCU Libraries, http://www.library.vcu.edu/jbc/speccoll/civilrights.html.

These are the stories of people like Richmond native Laverne Byrd Smith, who was a child during Virginia’s Jim Crow era. She said her earliest memory of segregation occurred before she started school.

“My first experience that I remember is being four years old, and getting on the streetcar going to [Richmond’s] north side, and crawling up in the seat beside a Caucasian lady who jumped up and acted as if she had been bitten by a snake, and rang the bell, and asked, ‘Mr. Conductor, can I get this little child up from beside me?’,” Byrd Smith recalled. “And I really didn't know what was wrong. And as my mother came down the aisle and took me from that seat and took me in the back, I spent a lot of time asking why.

“And she said, ‘well because we were Negroes we had to sit in the back.’ And I wanted to know why. And she told me a lot of things. She worked really hard at trying to explain that to me, and I could not accept it. I just continued to ask, why, why,” Byrd Smith said.

The comprehensive interviews represent a wide range of state and local leaders who were active from the 1930s to the 1970s. Each of the interviews runs about 25 minutes and recounts a powerful personal story from the height of segregation in Virginia. The contributors are from Surry, Prince Edward, Chesterfield and Henrico counties and the cities of Richmond, Norfolk, Danville and Hopewell.

In 1967 Dr. W. Ferguson Reid became the first African American to be elected to the Virginia House of Delegates since Reconstruction. He grew up in segregated Richmond, and remembers the system that created two societies, one black and one white.

“We always knew that there are certain things you could do and certain things you could not do,” said Reid, who went on to earn a medical degree from Howard University. “We always knew that you couldn't drink out of a white fountain, you couldn't go into a bathroom that was marked white. You couldn't eat out at a lunch counter. You couldn't try on clothes in department stores.

“You couldn't eat lunch in a department store even though lunch was available to everybody else. If you ate it, you had to carry it out. You couldn't sit down at the counter. You couldn't go to Miller & Rhoads Tea Room, or the Thalhimer's room that they had for people to relax in,” Reid said.

“These interviews are an important part of the VCU Libraries Archives of the New Dominion Initiative, documenting the social and cultural history of twentieth and twenty-first century Virginia,” said Curtis Lyons, head of special collections and archives at VCU’s James Branch Cabell Library, and coordinator of Voices of Freedom at VCU. “They complement a large and growing body of research materials on Virginia’s civil rights movement.”

The videos were compiled by the Virginia Civil Rights Movement Video Initiative, a group created to produce videotaped oral histories of civil rights leaders in Virginia. The initiative is chaired by state Sen. Benjamin J. Lambert, III, of Richmond.   

“The testimonials from these individuals make Virginia’s civil rights movement come alive,” Lambert said. “These courageous men and women were witness to, and were leaders of a period of dramatic change, one of the most significant times in U.S. history.

“These interviews not only bring history to life, but they assure us that the actions of a few leaders can make a big difference; they can change society,” Lambert said.

“These videos reveal some of the missing historical context and contributions of African Americans in Virginia,” said Ben Ragsdale, video initiative coordinator. “They provide a rare opportunity to get to know some of the brave Virginians who were at the forefront in the fight against our state’s segregationist Jim Crow laws.

“We see the passion in their eyes, hear the resolve in their voices and better understand what it was like to take a stand for social justice in that era,” Ragsdale said.

The interviewees are:
·         Raymond H. Boone, editor and publisher of the Richmond Free Press
·         Joyce E. Glaise, Ed.D., Danville educator, civil rights and political leader
·         Thomas S. Hardy, Surry County shipyard worker and community activist
·         Rev. Curtis W. Harris of Hopewell, pastor, civil rights and political leader
·         Oliver W. Hill, Sr., Richmond civil rights attorney
·         Jane Cooper Johnson and her mother, Elizabeth Cooper of Chesterfield County, plaintiffs in a court case that integrated the Richmond Public Schools
·         Henry L. Marsh, III, Richmond civil rights attorney and political leader
·         Rev. Milton Reid, Norfolk pastor and civil rights leader
·         Dr. W. Ferguson Reid of Henrico County, surgeon and first African American elected to the Virginia General Assembly since Reconstruction
·         Laverne Byrd Smith, Ph.D., Richmond educator and civil rights leader
·         John A. Stokes, native of Prince Edward County, educator and strike leader at R.R. Moton High School in Farmville

In addition to the videos, the full transcripts of the individual interview sessions also are available through the VCU Libraries.

For additional information on Voices of Freedom or the archives of the New Dominion projects, please contact Curtis Lyons, head of Special Collections and Archives at James Branch Cabell Library, at calyons@vcu.edu or by telephone at (804) 828-1108.

Visit www.library.vcu.edu for more on VCU Libraries.