Virginia Foster Durr
Virginia Foster Durr | |
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Children | 5 |
Virginia Foster Durr (August 6, 1903 – February 24, 1999) was an American
Life
Background and education
Durr was born in Birmingham, Alabama, where she was raised by black women but was also taught that the Ku Klux Klan were protectors of southern womanhood. One of her grandfathers had owned a plantation and slaves, while the other was a member of the Ku Klux Klan.[5]
Durr attended Wellesley College in Massachusetts[6] from 1920 to 1923. Durr has explicitly acknowledged Wellesley as the catalyst of her moral transformation from a racist to civil rights activist. She came to question segregation after her experience with her college's dining hall. The dining halls had a rotating tables policy that required students to eat meals with random students regardless of their race.[7] Durr, uncomfortable with this idea, protested this rule, but ended up dealing with it after the head of her house threatened to release her from the university if she didn't embrace the rotating tables policy. See Virginia Durr Moment.
Durr was forced to withdraw from Wellesley College due to financial reasons in 1923 and returned home to Birmingham, Alabama.
Marriage
After withdrawing from school in 1923, Virginia Durr returned home to Birmingham, Alabama where she met her future husband
Activism
In 1933 Durr moved with her husband to Washington, D.C. after Clifford was appointed legal counsel to the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and later Chief Legal Counsel to the Defense Plant Corporation. Eventually it was where they became New Dealers. It was in Washington where Virginia Durr's activism began. She met important people through her husband's New Deal contacts, some of whom changed her conservative views on civil matters.[10] While her husband was working for the Reconstruction Finance Corporation,[11] Durr joined the Woman's National Democratic Club.[12] In 1938, she was one of the founding members of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare (SCHW), an interracial group working to reduce segregation and improve living conditions in the South. The group was formed in part as a response to Franklin Roosevelt's proclamation that the South was the leading economic problem in the nation.[13]
By 1941, Durr became the vice president of the SCHW's civil rights subcommittee. Working together with
Progressive Party candidate
Quote from an obituary written by Patricia Sullivan:
"Mrs. Durr ran for the U.S. Senate from Virginia on the
Her opponents were
McCarthy era
During the McCarthy era, a time where there was intense anti-communist suspicion in the United States where one made accusations of disloyalty without proper evidence, Durr was called to New Orleans to appear before Senator James Eastland's Internal Security Committee, where they investigated suspected Communists. Because the Durrs did not openly condemn communism, anti-Communist activists often targeted them. At the committee, Durr gave her name, assured them that she was not a Communist, and then refused to answer any further questions.[1]
Montgomery
In 1951, Durr returned with her husband to
Durr's activism started once she joined the local Council of Human Relations, Montgomery's only interracial political organization.
When Virginia arrived at Montgomery in 1951, she recalled, "When I came here, there were two groups of United Church Women, one black and one white."[16] A group of people in her town arranged to have integrated church meetings of black and white women. There was a lot of opposition against the integrated meetings, from the locals as well as from within the church. In her autobiography, Mrs. Durr wrote how the head of the United Church Women in the South (UCWS, an integration group) came to one of the meetings. Opponents of the meeting took the license plate numbers from the cars, and later published the addresses and telephone numbers of the members in an Alabama Ku Klux Klan magazine named "Sheet Lightning." The women of the UCWS received harassing phone calls. Some had family members who publicly distanced themselves from their activities, because it was bad for business. As a result, the women became too afraid to continue their meetings and the group broke up.[17]
External videos | |
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“Interview with Virginia Durr” conducted for Eyes on the Prize in 1986 discusses her friendship with Rosa Parks. |
Virginia Durr met
Virginia and her husband also had associations with Martin Luther King Jr., as he and his wife sent the Durrs a postcard from their trip to India in 1959.[19] In March 1965, during the Selma to Montgomery march, the Durrs housed many of the volunteers in their home. In her autobiography, she recalls “I spent all my time making coffee and frying bacon and eggs for them.” [16] After the boycott, Virginia remained an involved civil rights activist, including working for a variety of organizations such as the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.[19] She continued traveling and speaking across the country to colleges, community groups, and civil rights commemorations.
Assessment of George C. Wallace phenomenon
During the 1966 Alabama gubernatorial campaign during which white supremacist Gov. George C. Wallace stage-managed the surrogate candidacy of his wife, Lurleen Wallace, Durr wrote that the Wallace campaign motto -- "Stand Up for Alabama" -- "does not mean one dam, single thing except to prevent integration." The appeal, she stated, "sets people on fire," especially white teenagers who "pursue you downtown [in Montgomery] with Wallace stickers and it's almost your life if you refuse one, as they look at you with such hatred ... and go on screaming 'Stand up for Alabama.'"[20]
She further assessed his presidential applications in a May 1966 letter a friend: “I know you think I am crazy when I say he expects to be President. But he actually does. He thinks the race issue is going to become more and more the central issue [of American politics], and he is going to arouse hatred all over the whole country, and then pose as their Saviour.” [21]
Later life
Clifford Durr died on May 12, 1975, at age 76 and Virginia Durr continued to write and speak about political issues. Mrs. Durr remained active in state and local politics until she was in her nineties. In 1985 she published her autobiography, Outside the Magic Circle. She continued being politically active until a few years before her death. Virginia Foster Durr died in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, on February 24, 1999, at the age of 95.[11]
Upon hearing of Durr's death, Rosa Parks said Durr's "upbringing of privilege did not prohibit her from wanting equality for all people. She was a lady and a scholar, and I will miss her."[22] President Bill Clinton said after her death: "Her courage, outspokenness, and steely conviction in the earliest days of the civil rights movement helped change this nation forever."[23]
Writings
Durr published her memoir, Outside the Magic Circle: The Autobiography of Virginia Foster Durr, in 1990, almost a decade before her death.[3]
Her memoirs cover the
Of note is the account of her acquaintance with Alger Hiss ("a charming and attractive fellow") and of her version of the breakdown of his marriage with Priscilla Hiss. During the 1930s in Washington, DC, Durr knew the Hisses through Marnie and Henry Abbott, the latter descended from the family of US President John Adams. Some years later, she saw Priscilla Hiss at the wedding of the oldest child of Clark Foreman (founder of the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee and a Wallace aide during the 1948 elections). Aside from aging past point of recognition, Mrs. Hiss (according to Durr), was "terribly bitter" about her separation from Alger Hiss:
He [Hiss] became a symbolic hero, particularly to a lot of rich women here in New York. And they just took him away from me. They surrounded him and made him a hero and became worshippers, formed a cult almost.[3]
References
- ^ a b c Sundman, John (30 June 2011). "Virginia Foster Durr and the Salvation of Alabama". wetmachine.com. Retrieved 2016-06-23.
- ^ Huston, Luther A. (23 July 1948). "Politicians Scarce Among Delegates". New York Times. Retrieved 28 November 2017.
- ^ a b c
Durr, Virginia Foster (1990). Outside the Magic Circle: The Autobiography of Virginia Foster Durr. University of Alabama Press. pp. 202–206 ("cult" p. 204). ISBN 9780817305178./
- ^ "Inductees". Alabama Women's Hall of Fame. State of Alabama. Retrieved February 20, 2012.
- ^ ISBN 978-1568586816.
- ^ Mur Wolf (June 12, 2000). "Person of the Week: Virginia Foster Durr". Archived from the original on 2006-09-01. Retrieved 2007-01-17.
- ^ "Durr biographies". aum.edu. Archived from the original on 2013-11-04. Retrieved 2013-11-04.
- ^ Brown, Sarah. "Clifford Durr". encyclopediaofalabama.org. Archived from the original on 2014-10-18. Retrieved 2013-11-04.
- ISBN 978-0801852343.
- ^ a b "Password Logon Page". ic.galegroup.com. Archived from the original on 2022-06-18. Retrieved 2015-11-15.
- ^ a b c Patricia Sullivan. "Virginia Foster Durr Obituary". Retrieved 2007-01-17.
- ^ "Virginia Foster Durr". Encyclopedia of Alabama.
- ^ a b Woodham, Rebecca. "Virginia Foster Durr". encyclopediaofalabama.org. Archived from the original on 2014-12-20. Retrieved 2013-11-04.
- ^ "Virginia Durr (1903-1999)". library.wustl.edu. Archived from the original on 2011-06-10. Retrieved 2013-11-04.
- ^ "Jewish Currents May 2006 - They Stood Up". jewishcurrents.org. Archived from the original on 2016-01-27. Retrieved 2015-11-15.
- ^ ISBN 0817305173.
- ^ "H-Net Discussion Networks -". h-net.msu.edu. Retrieved 2015-11-15.
- ^ a b "Eyes on the Prize Interviews I". digital.wustl.edu. Retrieved 2015-11-15.
- ^ a b "Durr, Virginia Foster (1903-1999)". kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu. Retrieved 2019-12-03.
- OCLC 32739924.
- OCLC 32739924.
- ^ Robinson, Doug. "Virginia Heard Durr (Foster) "(1903 - ", "1999)", " "". geni.com.
- ^ "Virginia Foster Durr". awhf.org.
Bibliography
- Durr, Virginia Foster (1990). Outside the Magic Circle: The Autobiography of Virginia Foster Durr. University of Alabama Press. pp. 202–206 ("cult" p. 204). ISBN 9780817305178.
- Freedom Writer: Virginia Foster Durr, Letters from the Civil Rights Years, edited by Patricia Sullivan (New York: Routledge, 2003). ISBN 0-415-94516-X
- Dreier, Peter (2012). The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame. New York: Nation Books. p. 196-199. ISBN 1568586817
External links
- Rosa Parks and Virginia Durr Archived 2007-04-15 at the Wayback Machine Jewish Currents May 2006
- Oral History Interviews with Virginia Foster Durr : from Oral Histories of the American South
- "Virginia Foster Durr, Sue Thrasher, conducted by, and Jacquelyn Hall, conducted by Oral History Interview with Virginia Foster Durr, March 13, 14, 15, 1975. Interview G-0023-1. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)". Oral Histories of the American South.
- "Virginia Foster Durr and Sue Thrasher, conducted by Oral History Interview with Virginia Foster Durr, March 13, 14, 15, 1975. Interview G-0023-2. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)". Oral Histories of the American South.
- "Virginia Foster Durr and Sue Thrasher, conducted by Oral History Interview with Virginia Foster Durr, October 16, 1975. Interview G-0023-3. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)". Oral Histories of the American South.
- "Oral History Interview with Virginia Foster Durr, February 6, 1991. Interview A-0337. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)". Oral Histories of the American South. Documenting the American South. Archived from the original on 2010-06-10.
- Virginia Foster Durr Papers. - Schlesinger Library Archived 2012-05-09 at the Wayback Machine, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
- "America, They Loved You Madly; Interview with Virginia Durr,” a precursor to Eyes on the Prize; 1979-08-08, American Archive of Public Broadcasting