All Stories: 15
Stories
NAACP v. Button (1963)
IntroductionFollowing the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that declared racial segregation in public education unconstitutional and the Court’s order, issued one year later, that all-white public schools…
Scott v. London (1806)
IntroductionScott v. London was an 1806 Supreme Court decision involving a freedom suit brought by London, a man enslaved in the Virginia portion of the federal District of Columbia. The case stemmed from changes in the law and geography of American…
Virginia House of Delegates v. Bethune-Hill (2019)
IntroductionThe late twentieth century witnessed renewed political competition between Democrats and Republicans in Virginia. The old one-party oligarchy of the Byrd Machine no longer existed, as the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the abolition of…
Morgan v. Virginia (1946)
IntroductionIn the summer of 1944, Irene Morgan travelled South from her job at the Glen Martin bomber plant in Baltimore to visit her mother in Gloucester County, Virginia. On the return trip home, Morgan and another Black woman were directed by…
Boynton v. Virginia (1960)
IntroductionSince its founding in 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People waged a legal campaign against racial segregation and discrimination. In the decade after the Second World War, the organization scored a series…
Wittman v. Personhuballah (2016)
IntroductionVirginia followed the Southern patterns of privileging rural over urban districts in elections as well as of diluting the strength and numbers of African American voters by all means necessary. Accordingly, voting districts would be…
Harper v Virginia (1966)
Introduction The Reconstruction in Virginia lasted longer than in other Southern states, largely due to the strength of African American voters and their ability to ally with whites opposed to the Democratic establishment. One of the achievements of…
Griffin v. Prince Edward Co (1964)
Introduction In 1951, African American students at Robert Russa Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia organized a mass walkout in protest of the Prince Edward County School Board’s policy of racial segregation. Barbara Johns, a sixteen-year-old…
Scull v. Virginia (1959)
Introduction Virginia led the "Massive Resistance" to public school desegregation in the immediate wake of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas decision in May 1954. This "Massive Resistance" included the closing of public…
Ex Parte Virginia (1880)
IntroductionDanville in Pittsylvania County had served as the last capitol of the Confederacy after Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House in April 1865. It was then no surprise that Judge James D. Coles of Pittsylvania County was one…