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Part one. Alice Jackson Stuart recounts her experiences as the first African American student to apply to the University of Virginia. When Donald Gaines Murray applied to University of Maryland School of Law, Ms. Stuart (who already had a bachelor's degree from Virginia Union University in 1933) spoke with family friend and Murray's lawyer Charles Hamilton Houston about helping to advance integration of higher education by provoking a legal case via her application to the University of Virginia graduate school of education. Part two. Ms. Stuart recalls different events that occurred during litigation of her case during 1935 and 1936. She explains that when the Virginia General Assembly passed a bill awarding scholarships and living expenses to minority students to attend out-of-state schools, she applied to and then attended Columbia University for her master's degree. She talks about other important Virginians who benefited from the bill, including Spotswood Robinson. She also discusses her teaching career. Part three. Ms. Stuart talks about witnessing a lynch mob, which ended in the killing of African American taxi driver Lee Snell, at Bethune-Cookman University where she taught. She also discusses teaching at Howard University, the Richmond public school system, Rutgers University, and Middlesex County College in New Jersey, among other career accomplishments.
Part one. Mr. Lorin Thompson discusses the 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education, which in practice gave states the opportunity to close public schools in order to avoid desegregation. The Charlottesville schools closed in the fall of 1958, the teachers volunteered to teach in other venues. The crisis over school desegregation eventually became an important social, economic and moral issue. Mr. Thompson asserts that people should find an amenable solution and recognize the rights of all people. Thompson was the director of the Bureau of Population Economic Research at the University of Virginia which studied problems of urban development. Part two. Different camera angles.
Part one. Footage of Montgomery, Alabama. At 8:00, Judge Dolores R. Boyd interview begins at her home in Montgomery. Part two. Judge Boyd offers opinions on the so-called New South, desegregation versus integration, the still-unrealized aspects of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, and accessing the civil rights movement via churches. Part three. Judge Boyd discusses her childhood role models, her school experiences, and the need for appreciation of African American culture. Part four. Ms. Boyd believes African Americans are struggling to keep what they have earned over past few decades. She says there is racism, especially because of economic disparity, and the law is critical to determining society's values. At 9:28, footage of Boyd at her office.
Kim Roberts, founder of Young Women Leaders Program, discusses the purpose and logistics of the program and how it is being received by both the Charlottesville community as well as the students at the University who are involved.
Phyllis Lefller, director of the institute of public history at the University of Virginia, discusses the project of collecting the history of 9,500 women at the University of Virginia from 1920 to 1972.
Part one. Civil rights activist Palmer Weber asserts that there were three prongs to the attack on systemic segregation in the South: jobs, education, and suffrage. He speaks of his association with A. Philip Randolph and how Randolph set about conquering segregation in labor. He credits Charles Houston with the strategy of attacking segregation in education, via court cases. Weber talks about his election to the national board of the NAACP. He mentions the work of Mary McCleod Bethune, Ralph Bunche, and Mordecai Johnson. Part two. Mr. Weber discusses lawyer Oliver Hill, writer Nancy Cunard, Jack Graveley of the NAACP, Dr. J.M. Tinsley, and Professor Duncan Clark Hyde. Weber elaborates on his work for the Fair Employment Practices Commission. He credits World War II for advancing the NAACP's attack on the segregation system and swelling its membership. In terms of civil rights progress, the NAACP’s struggle to get the Armed Forces desegregated was as great as Charles Houston’s endeavors in education. He also says that Philip Randolph's accomplishments in labor are as important as Houston's for education; and Martin Luther King Jr. built on the work of all of these men, but transcended them by urging African American clergy to action. Weber also talks about Walter White and his rifts with Paul Robeson and W.E.B. Dubois. Part three. Mr. Weber discusses Walter White and his impact on the civil rights struggle, especially White’s study of lynchings in the South. Other people discussed are Mary McCleod Bethune, Ralph Bunche, Lucy Randolph Mason, Eleanor Roosevelt, Tom Clark, Thurgood Marshall, and Earl Warren.
Elwood, William A, Kulish, Mykola, Freeman, Anne Hobson, 1934-
Summary:
Part one. Civil rights attorneys Oliver Hill and S.W. Tucker discuss the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, including the meaning of "with all deliberate speed." They remark upon how long it took to desegregate schools. They comment on the policies of Senator Harry Byrd and President Dwight Eisenhower. Mr. Hill talks about his service in the military during World War II. Mr. Tucker also served, and he relates stories about how Jim Crow worked in the military. Discs two to five. Mr. Tucker and Mr. Hill recount stories of life under Jim Crow, including experiences with seating on trains and other forms of transportation, service at restaurants, taking the bar exam, race riots, and trying to reserve a bridal suite on a honeymoon. They also tell the story of Dr. Charles Drew. Part six. Mr. Hill reviews Virginia's policy of Massive Resistance, the General Assembly's Boatwright committee and Thompson committee, Virginia courts and judges, and the people placement board. At 11:20, Anne Hobson Freeman talks about her new book on the law firm of Hunton and Williams in Richmond. The firm represented the school board of Prince Edward County in 1951 when students there sued the district for integration.
A documentary film series and website about Virginia's history since the Civil War.
Episode 1– New Deal Virginia explores two significant changes in Virginia history: the creation of Shenandoah National Park and the electrification of rural Virginia. Both stories trace the effects of the federal government on the lives of everyday rural Virginians in the 1930s. Letters, maps, newspaper stories and teaching resources accompany this exploration and film (30 minutes).
Episode 3 – Massive Resistance became Virginia's policy to prevent school desegregation in the wake of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision in 1954. Many of Virginia's white leaders resisted integration with all of their considerable political and legal means. The story of massive resistance and of black Virginians' protests against segregation began in the early 1950s and continues today. This two-part film (one hour) traces the history of massive resistance in Virginia and considers some of its legacies. "Massive Resistance" was an Emmy Nominee in 2000 of the Washington, D.C. Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and will be shown nationally on PBS in February 2002 for Black History Month.
Episode 4 – Virginia Fights World War II explores the transformative changes that Virginia experienced in World War II. Virginia mobilized hundreds of thousands of citizens during World War II and became the home base for a host of navy, army munitions, and defense industries. Virginia's soldiers fought in the Pacific and landed at Omaha Beach on D-Day. This two-part film (one hour) follows the stories of everyday Virginians, those who fought at D-Day and those who patrolled Virginia beaches, worked in the munition plants, flew missions in Europe, and fell in love during the war. This site contains the image archive for the film--over 1,600 images of Virginia or Virginians in World War II.
Ellen Phipps is a Certified Therapeutic Recreation Specialist and the Director of the Adult Day Care at Jefferson Area Board for Aging (JABA) in Charlottesville discusses how caring for an elderly adult is a women's issue in regards to assistance as well as care giving.
First identified in 1947 and first known to cause human illness in 1953, Zika virus was seldom seen during the next 60 years. Starting in 2013, however, sizable outbreaks of human infection occurred, and in 2015 Zika appeared in the Americas, first in Brazil, then much more widely. The mosquito-borne virus also began making dramatic headlines. Zika was discovered to be transmissible during pregnancy, with serious, even devastating neurological injury to the baby, and transmissible between sexual partners, with risks to a fetus in the event of pregnancy. Earlier this year, the World Health Organization declared Zika a global public health emergency.
The 2016 Hayden-Farr Lecture by Dr. Lyle Petersen, Incident Manager for Zika Response at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is an update on Zika--the science and the medical, public, health, environmental, social, and ethical implications that make this disease an urgent global challenge.
The Hayden-Farr Lecture in Epidemiology and Virology/Medical Grand Rounds
Co-presented with the Department of Medicine and the Office of the Hospital Epidemiologist, UVA Health System
We've long known about books' ability to comfort, but can they have the power to heal? At a time when burnout is rife among practicing physicians and other clinicians, health care organizations are introducing systemic changes, including wellness programs. Beyond this, though, what might individual clinicians do to stave off burnout and fuel emotional resilience? New research suggests burnout relief may be as close at hand as a good novel. Reading for pleasure--especially, reading literary fiction--seems to enhance empathy and combat emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, thereby improving doctors' abilities to connect with the persons who are their patients and find joy in their work. Indeed, if reading for relaxation makes such a difference, should reading literature be a prescribed part of physician education and training? In this Medical Center Hour, Drs. Daniel Marchalik and Hunter Groninger examine emerging research on books' benefits for doctors and trace their own experience with the Literature and Medicine track at the Georgetown University School of Medicine.
January 23, 2019
Joe Richman
Since 1996, the Radio Diaries project has been giving people audio recorders and working with them to report on their own lives and histories. Collaborating with teens and octogenarians, persons with chronic and terminal illness, prisoners and prison guards, gospel preachers and bra saleswomen, the famous and the unknown, the project tells extraordinary stories of ordinary life. With stories aired on NPR, BBC, This American Life, and its own podcast, Radio Diaries has pioneered a new form of citizen journalism and, along the way, garnered every major award in broadcast journalism. This Medical Center Hour welcomes Radio Diaries’ founding director, Joe Richman, to share stories and draw parallels with health care practice, where, daily, clinicians traffic in the “extraordinary stories of ordinary life.”
The Edward W. Hook Lecture in Medicine and the Arts / Medical Grand Rounds
Co-presented with the Department of Medicine, UVA
The year 2018 marks the centennial of the "Spanish" influenza pandemic, the world's deadliest event, killing at least 50 million persons worldwide. This pandemic's sudden emergence and high fatality are stark reminders of the threat influenza has posed to human health and society for more than a millennium. Unusual features of the 1918-1919 outbreak, such as the age-specific mortality pattern and unexpectedly high frequency of severe and fatal pneumonias, are still not fully understood. But the recent sequencing and reconstruction of the 1918 virus—work accomplished by NIH scientist Jeffery Taubenberger and colleagues—have yielded answers to crucial questions about the virus's origin and pathogenicity. In this Hayden-Farr Lecture at Medical Center Hour, Dr. Taubenberger summarizes key findings, considers yet-to-be answered questions about the 1918 influenza, and looks ahead to 21st century public health preparedness and the need to optimize preventive vaccines and vaccination strategies.
The Hayden-Farr Lecture in Epidemiology and Virology/Medical Grand Rounds/History of the Health Sciences Lecture
Co-presented with the Department of Medicine, Historical Collections in the Health Sciences Library, and Influenza! 1918-2018
Lucy Kalanithi is many things. Physician. Professor. Writer, and speaker. Mother. Widow. She was married for nine years to Dr. Paul Kalanithi, a young neurosurgeon diagnosed with advanced lung cancer, the illness that claimed his life in 2015 at age thirty-seven. As he struggled, suffered, and worried, Paul wrote. His memoir—When Breath Becomes Air, for which Lucy wrote the epilogue—became a bestseller after it was published in 2016.
In this Medical Center Hour, which is also the School of Nursing's annual Bice Memorial Lecture, Dr. Lucy Kalanithi talks with UVA Nursing Professor Ken White about the Kalanithis' challenging journey to the end of Paul's life and how Paul and Lucy did not avoid suffering but, rather, leaned into it and created meaning from it.
The Zula Mae Baber Bice Memorial Lecture
Co-presented with the School of Nursing
Carl Poole was born in Germany in 1975 where his mother was stationed with the U.S. Army, and spent most of his childhood in Virginia before returning again as an adult. Poole’s great-aunt, aunt, and cousins grew up in Lambert’s Point in Norfolk, and he recalls seeing coal dust on the exterior of their houses as a child. Poole began working for the New Virginia Majority in 2022 on environmental justice advocacy.
Track 1: In this June 2023 testimony, Poole reflects on his year working at the Wastewater Treatment Plant, 15 yards away from the Norfolk Southern Coal Yard in Lambert’s Point, and the impact the dust had on him on a daily basis. This testimony includes descriptions of his cousins’ experiences with bronchitis. He also mentions how residents of Lambert’s Point were displaced through eminent domain when the city of Norfolk built a water reservoir, and how the community has been neglected in city services, including street cleaning. Poole describes gentrification caused by Old Dominion University, and reflects upon how residents in the area have not felt heard on issues of environmental hazards or housing justice.
Track 2: This oral history traces Poole’s family history, including his grandmother’s experience raising seven children in Norfolk’s public housing, many of whom went on to attend college and start businesses in the area. Poole discusses the white-led campaigns resisting integration in Norfolk public schools in the 1950s and 60s, as well as the impact busing had on the Black community. Poole reflects on his middle school years in a majority-white community in Indiana, and his experience returning to Hampton Roads to join the Army in 1994. The interview includes discussions of the Obama presidency, the Trump election, his organizing work in 2020, and his goals for Black civic involvement in Norfolk.
Diane Davis-Wagner was born Diane Davis in 1947 and grew up in Mount Herman, a Black working class neighborhood in central Portsmouth, Virginia. In this September 2023 interview, she discusses the psychological impacts of being barred from the all-white swimming pool and golf course as a child. She also discusses the experience of living near what she and her friends referred to as “the Holy Bridge,” the demarcation between the white neighborhood of Churchland and Mount Herman. As a young person, Davis-Wagner participated in civil rights activism with her mother, Helen Davis, supporting lunch counter sit-ins in Portsmouth. She witnessed Dr. Martin Luther King speak in Suffolk, Virginia. She attended I.C. Norcom High School, Virginia Union University, and Norfolk State, where she was one of the first graduates of the PhD program in social work. Later, Davis-Wagner became the second female president of the Central Civic Forum, which worked to elect Black local politicians and led the desegregation movement of the Bide-A-Wee golf course in 1987. She reflects on how her granddaughter enjoys the golf course today as an avid golfer. The interview includes Davis-Wagner’s observations on segregation’s continued legacy throughout the city and the uneven tax burdens levied on the city of Portsmouth today. Davis-Wagner also discusses how Norfolk State University has changed, and the impacts of the 2020 pandemic on her students.
Helen Davis was born in Pennsylvania in 1927 and grew up in Portsmouth, Virginia. Her mother worked as a teacher and her father worked in coal mines in Pennsylvania and then later as a rigger at the Portsmouth Shipyard. In this September 2023 interview, Davis speaks about her experiences attending the all-Black Brighton School and living in a segregated city between the 1940 - 1960s. The interview touches on racial discrimination within the housing system, including her husband’s experiences being denied a home loan while he was serving in the Navy and working for the shipyard. Throughout her life, Davis worked as an advocate of racial justice issues, serving as a secretary for a Black civic league, leading voter registration campaigns and demonstrations, and supporting young activists’ work integrating the Portsmouth lunch counters and high schools. The interview also contains descriptions of the presence of the KKK in Chesapeake, Virginia, her memories of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination, and her work on the school board in Portsmouth.
Ann Creasy lived in the Lambert’s Point/Park Place area while a student at Old Dominion University from 2011 to 2015. She describes sweeping her front porch to remove coal dust and prevent tracking it into her home. In this testimony, Creasy, who works for the Sierra Club on local environmental justice issues, also discusses spending time at the Whitehurst Beach near the coal piers as a student and seeing coal on the park benches and in the sand.
Javon Bennett was born in 1990 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and lives in Hampton, Virginia. Beginning in 2020, he started working as an organizer for New Virginia Majority on food insecurity, environmental racism, and housing discrimination issues. His work allows him to observe how the coal piers in Norfolk and Newport News impact the daily lives of residents.
Track 1: In this June 2023 testimony to the EPA, Bennett discusses how coal dust settles on windows, children’s clothing, garden beds, and cars in Lambert’s Point and the East End of Newport News. He discusses his own experience struggling to breathe during a hot summer day canvassing in Lambert’s Point, as well as the long term health impacts, including chronic asthma and bronchitis, and financial expenses that burden those he has met through his environmental justice work. He urges the EPA to visit these communities to witness these hazards first-hand.
Track 2: In this oral history, Bennett reflects on his experience growing up in the 1990s in Philadelphia and how his experience navigating trash pollution and discrimination within his classroom led him to his organizing work today. After moving to Newport News when his mother started a job at the shipyard, Bennett worked on environmental justice issues and for mutual aid organizations with Tidewater Tenants Rights. This interview includes his reflections on urban violence, houselessness, food insecurity, and the persistent costs of coal dust for residents living near coal piers in the Hampton Roads region.
Kim Sudderth is a community leader and advocate for racial justice with the Norfolk branch of the NAACP, and the first Black woman to serve as Vice Chair of the Norfolk Planning Commission, beginning in 2022. She was the Repair Lab’s inaugural Practitioner-in-Residence in 2021. Born in 1971, Sudderth grew up in Norfolk and spent some of her adult years in Virginia Beach before returning home to Norfolk.
Track 1: In this oral history, Sudderth discusses her childhood years growing up on the naval base near Ocean View in Norfolk, and her memories of her mother’s softball league. In her later adult years, Sudderth began advocating for environmental justice cases with Mothers Out Front. Sudderth shares her perspectives on power and change-making, and discusses the connected and widespread issues of housing and the environment, as well as the lessons she has learned through organizing.
Track 2: In this interview Sudderth discusses her experience with a representative of the city in conversation about the proposed downtown Norfolk seawall and the absence of structural mitigations for flooding for the predominantly Black Southside neighborhood, where she resides. Sudderth also addresses Norfolks’ Vision2100 document, a neighborhood planning guide created in response to forecasted sea-level rise and the resulting changes in the city’s geography.
Lathaniel Kirts was born in 1988 and grew up in the Norview community of Norfolk, Virginia. In this oral history interview, he describes his experiences as an honor roll student in Norfolk public schools while he and his family were navigating homelessness. Kirts was granted a scholarship to Morehouse College in Atlanta, where he studied political science and worked in public service. While serving as a Deputy Clerk in courtrooms in Richmond and in Norfolk, he witnessed the school-to-prison pipeline. This interview includes Kirts’s reflections on his work for Communities and Schools, an organization dedicated to providing social services and mentorship for students in K-12 settings, around housing and food insecurity, and his decision to attend seminary school at Virginia Union, where he graduated in 2015. Kirts is an active community advocate for protecting residents living next to CSX rail yards against coal dust pollution. He served as the Repair Lab Practitioner-in-Residence (2023-2024). This oral history was conducted at Pay First Church, the church that Kirts and his wife lead in Newport News.
Keela Boose is an English Professor at Norfolk State University and a self-described “child of historically Black colleges and universities.” Born in Monroe, Louisiana, in 1958, Booses’s parents taught Education and Psychology at Grambling State University, Alabama State College, and later, Norfolk State. In this 2023 interview, Boose discusses the mentors who inspired her love of reading. She recalls the social and political contexts of Civil Rights-era Montgomery, Alabama, and her memories growing up in what was then a racially-mixed neighborhood of Campostella Heights in the Southside of Norfolk. Boose pursued college and graduate work at Alcorn State University in Mississippi and at Northern Illinois University. The interview was conducted in her home along the Elizabeth River, which her parents bought in 1966 and she later inherited. In the interview, she describes how sea level rise and the practices of developers buying rights to the water has impacted the shoreline of her neighborhood.
Monét Johnson is a Norfolk resident and advocate working with New Virginia Majority, a nonprofit focused on economic and racial justice. She works as the Lead Organizer for Housing and Environment. Johnson was born in 1996 in Brockton, Massachusetts, and spent her summers as a child in Virginia before moving to Norfolk.
Track 1: In this oral history, Johnson discusses her experience growing up in a majority-Cape Verdean community in Massachusetts, her memories visiting her family in Virginia, and her organizing work during her college years at Framingham State University. Johnson describes her work at New Virginia Majority starting in 2020 fighting housing discrimination and combating environmental injustices, including rising sea levels and coal dust pollution in Norfolk.
Track 2: Johnson discusses the legal battle with the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority in 2021, where she was a plaintiff on behalf of residents of St Paul’s public housing. In 2020, New Virginia Majority sued the city for housing discrimination violating the federal Fair Housing Act on behalf of Black residents. The lawsuit alleged that the NRHA perpetuated systemic racism and segregation through redevelopment of St Paul’s and the resulting displacement of hundreds of Black residents. Johnson’s party, made up of the New Virginia Majority and several other civil right organizations, won the lawsuit on behalf of tenants. The interview also discusses Johnson’s experiences advocating with public housing residents for better flooding and facility management and safer accommodations for children and elders. Kim Sudderth is also present in this interview.
Lawrence Turner was born and raised in the southeast community of Newport News. In this interview, Turner describes how his life has been shaped by mentorship he has received within his community, and also the impact environmental racism in Newport News has had on his life. Turner recalls that for at least once a year between 2002 and 2018, sea level rising would impact residents' daily lives, including water lines coming up the third stair of his home during high tides when he lived in the Salters Creek area of Newport News. Turner’s interview contains descriptions of his mentors, teachers, and athletic coaches throughout his secondary education and college experience. Turner graduated from the Call Me MISTER (Men Instructing Students Toward Effective Role Models) program at Longwood University, in Farmville, Virginia. His work as a high school counselor at schools in Newport News and Mansassas empowered students both in athletics and in post-high school work and education. Within his numerous community advocacy roles, Turner has helped develop a Toxic Tour, highlighting sites in the southeast community of Newport News contributing to air pollution. This oral history also includes Turner’s reflections on Newport News interstate traffic, gun violence, and how it impacted his family and mental health.
Randall Griffin was born and raised in 1967 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and spent time as a young child in Lanett, Alabama, where his mother’s family worked as sharecroppers. Griffin discusses his Cherokee roots in Standing Rock, Alabama, and his early memories of growing up in public housing in Tennessee. His father was a musician in Tennessee with a band called the Fabulous Battalions. Griffin joined the Navy and was stationed in Norfolk in 1986. Following his time in service, Griffin worked as a manager at a Fertilizer plant in Chesapeake when he lost his left hand in a workplace accident, which disabled him permanently. He later went on to work for the Parks and Recreation Departments in Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Chesapeake, and Portsmouth. In this oral history interview, Griffin discusses his experience often being the first Black person in these departments and his experience with workplace discrimination. He discusses the importance of rec centers in young people’s lives. This interview was conducted in the Cavalier Manor Recreation Center in Portsmouth, Virginia, where Griffin serves as the Recreation Program Specialist.
Ray Smith was born in Douglas Park, Portsmouth, Virginia, in 1954. His father worked in the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, and when the city of Portsmouth built the interstate in Douglas Park, his family and other residents were forced to relocate to the Mount Hermon neighborhood. When the city of Portsmouth announced the closure of I.C. Norcom, a historically Black high school in 1972, Smith and others organized a walkout in protest. I.C. Norcom was saved and eventually rebuilt in 1999, when Smith served on the school board. Smith became involved in city politics working for governor and presidential campaigns and served as the President of the Civic League, a community organization dedicated to improving conditions for the Portsmouth community of Cavalier Manor, of which he was a resident for 45 years. In this interview, Smith discusses the ways that recent tolls in Portsmouth have impacted Portsmouth residents and how the city dealt with Hurricane Isabel.
Vernon Crump was born in 1929 in Portsmouth, Virginia, and has been a leader in civil rights work in the city since he was 25 years old. Crump’s roots in the area extend for generations. Crump’s great-grandfather, George Crump, was one of the founding members of the Zion Baptist Church, created by Black residents in 1865 just after the Civil War. In this oral history interview, Crump reflects on the city as it was transformed by WWII, recalling his mother’s experience serving white WWII sailors breakfast at the Portsmouth Shipyard, and his own memory delivering news about the bombing of Pearl Harbor. As a young child, Crump worked as a shoe shiner in a white barber shop. Crump reflects on his time playing football and going to school dances in segregated schools in the 1940s and 50s, and his long and successful battles fighting workplace discrimination throughout his career with the Department of Disposal. In the 1950s and 60s, Crump led major voter registration campaigns with the Civic League in Portsmouth, which registered Black voters and later helped to elect the first Black man and woman to the City Council, the first Black judge, and the first Black Clerk of Court in Portsmouth. This interview, conducted with Crump’s son, Vernon Crump III also present, also includes Crump’s reflections on police violence and rising sea levels in the city of Portsmouth.
Sharon Johnson is a lifelong resident of Norfolk, Virginia. She has lived in the Bruces’ Park neighborhood in midtown since 1954.
Track 1: This interview discusses Johnson’s life and family, including her grandfather who was a Black contractor in Norfolk in the early part of the 20th century. It takes place in Johnson’s historic home, built by her grandfather.
Track 2: In this oral history, Johnson describes her memories of downtown Norfolk in the 1950s, and key moments including President Kennedy’s assassination and the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in 1963. Johnson graduated from Maury High in Norfolk in 1970, and reflects on the changes precipitated by integration, and her observations on race and discrimination while she lived in Boston. She discusses her participation in marches in Washington with the Service Employees International Union. The interview also includes a walking tour with Johnson as she describes the changes that have occurred in the neighborhood since the 1980s.
In this 2023 testimony, Tiara Lassiter speaks about her experiences going to the Community Center in Lambert’s Point and the impact coal dust has on the drinking water supply for residents in Lambert’s Point. The testimony includes her recollections about her childhood friend’s grandmother in Lambert’s Point who developed lung cancer and lived with foul-smelling water in her home pipes. She urges the federal government to exert pressure on Norfolk Southern to remedy their violation of the Clean Water Act.
Ellen Fuller discusses her doctoral research focusing on women working in an American corporation in Japan and how they are adapting to cultural changes as well as the different choices that are a result of this new hybrid of American and Japanese culture in the workplace.
Kyra Gaunt, doctorate from the University of Michigan, discusses her dissertation "The Games Black Girls Play" that focuses on how young black girls in urban settings learned social identities through music and play.
Part one. History professor Jeff Norrell talks in Kelly Ingram Park in Birmingham, Alabama, across the street from the 16th St. Baptist Church, about demonstrations there in 1963. He remarks on the children and student participants in the demonstrations and the confrontations between demonstrators and police in early May. He talks about what Birmingham is like in 1987, what the park and the church represent, and how downtown Birmingham has changed. Part two. Mr. Norrell recalls cases heard at the old Birmingham federal courthouse, like Steele v. Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company, and the Birmingham College case. He also talks about attorney Arthur Shores, the rise of African American political power in Birmingham, and voting rights cases from Birmingham. Part three. Mr. Norrell discusses the Confederate Flag on the Birmingham courthouse and what it represents to different people. Other topics include Gomillion v. Lightfoot, gerrymandering in Tuskegee, and the importance of Tuskegee. Footage of Birmingham. At 16:22, Reuben Davis footage begins. Mr. Davis speaks about living in Birmingham before and after desegregation and the New South.
Dr. Jennifer Wolch, Dean of the College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley speaks about the tensions of implementing urban nature projects. Wolch challenges us to think carefully about the many different and often marginalized interests (people and animals) that must be taken into account, and the potential “collisions” she sees in the movement.
Shu Jinghuan, professor of Education in Beijing currently in a Fulbright research fellowship at the University of Maryland, discusses the cultural revolution's effects on gender issues, women and education in China.
Karen Holt, director of the Equal Opportunity Office at the University of Virginia, discusses Affirmative Action and the consideration of race in admission decisions.
Elwood, William A, Kulish, Mykola, Hill, Oliver W., 1907-2007
Summary:
Part one. Civil rights attorney Oliver Hill and law professor A.E. Dick Howard discuss the Constitutional Revision Commission of Virginia in 1968 in front of the Capitol in Richmond. They go over Virginia Constitution history, including how the 1902 Constitution was written with the intent to discriminate against African Americans. Mr. Hill speaks about Massive Resistance, and Mr. Howard comments on awkward interpretations of the Virginia Constitution that let public schools close to avoid integration in the 1950s. The 1968 Virginia Constitution finally included an antidiscrimination clause. Mr. Hill and Mr. Howard relate the reasons why they went into constitutional law. Part two. Continuation of discussion about the 1968 Constitutional Revision Commission of Virginia.
Special Agent Candice DeLong, profiling coordinator at the San Francisco division of the FBI, discusses criminal profiling for investigations of violent and sex crimes.
Central Spokesperson for Palestinian people and author of This Side of Peace discusses the moral imperative for obtaining a central and recognized place for Palestinians. She focuses on her commitment to social justice and diplomacy in her home country.
Lisa Eorio, research scientist at the University of Virginia, discusses the gender wage gaps and her dissertation focused on theory of Human Capital. Her research finds that women were obtaining less wage compensation, and concentrated in lower paying industries.
Blaise Spinelli was one of the founders of the AIDS Services Group (ASG) in Charlottesville, and the bulk of his interview is spent discussing his experiences providing AIDS services in Charlottesville and his memories of the AIDS epidemic. Blaise also shares his experiences with gay community in Charlottesville and how it compares to gay community he experienced in other places like Washington, DC. Blaise was involved in an attempt to create a gay community center, and he remembers local gay bars and events with activists.
Elwood, William A, Higginbotham, A. Leon (Aloyisus Leon), 1928-1998
Summary:
Part one. Judge Collins Seitz recalls his childhood and schooling, the University of Delaware, the University of Virginia law school, and the DuPont scholarship. Part two. Mr. Seitz reports that discrimination was never discussed in law school, and separate but equal was never discussed while he was a young lawyer in Wilmington. Part three. Seitz talks about being appointed Vice Chancellor in Delaware's Court of Chancery. Important decisions he wrote in the corporate arena include the Bata Shoe case, Ringling Brothers case, and Campbell v. Loew’s. The first civil rights case he tried as judge was Parker v. University of Delaware in 1950. The case was based on the idea that separateness was inherently unequal. Part four. The per se theory, that segregation was inherently unequal, was a part of the Parker case, but Judge Seitz did not address it directly, so he decided the case on the question of whether or not school facilities were equal. Fundamental in his decision was the disparity in capital assets between the "white" University of Delaware and the "black" university known as Delaware State College, as well as terrible differences in curriculum and libraries. Seitz also comments on the Prince Edward County case in Virginia and his famous speech at a boys school in Wilmington. Part five. Seitz discusses his part in one of the five Brown v. Board of Education cases, Gebhart v. Belton, and his desire to declare separate but equal as unconstitutional in his written opinion, but he decided it was the place of the US Supreme Court to do so. He talks about the disparity between African American and white schools in Delaware, Louis Redding, and the granting of immediate relief. Part six. Seitz reviews Baker v. Carr and the Girard College case. Part seven. Different camera angles show Judge Higginbotham asking questions.
Part one. Civil rights attorney Joseph Rauh talks about his clerkships to the US Supreme Court for both Justices Cardozo and Frankfurter. He discusses the 1941 Executive Order by President Franklin Roosevelt, called the Fair Employment Act, which Rauh wrote. During World War II, he worked as Gen. MacArthur's secretary and in the Lend-Lease Administration. He recalls the founding of the Americans for Democratic Action in 1947. He tells anecdotes about working with A. Philip Randolph. Part two. Mr. Rauh remembers, during the 1940s, African Americans and whites could not eat together in a restaurant in Washington DC. The District was a segregated city until the Supreme Court ruled otherwise. Mr. Rauh talks about his acquaintance with Charles Hamilton Houston. Mr. Rauh describes Houston's work in the Steele case. He explains the new civil rights platform adopted at the 1948 Democratic Convention. Part three. Mr. Rauh comments on President Truman's civil rights record. He states that the best US President for civil rights is Lyndon Johnson and the worst is Ronald Reagan. Mr. Rauh credits Charles Houston with the first use of the argument of state action in discrimination cases. He recounts his dealings with NAACP lobbyist Clarence Mitchell, especially their efforts in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Mr. Rauh recalls President John Kennedy, when proposing what would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964, pointing out the irony that Alabama Sheriff Bull Connor did more for civil rights than anybody else. Mr. Rauh tell stories about civil rights champion President Johnson working to pass legislation. Part four. Mr. Rauh describes the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and its effects on the nation's history using the example of the defeat of Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court in 1987 primarily by Senators elected by African American constituents from the South. The first meaningful civil rights legislation since Reconstruction was the Act of 1964. Mr. Rauh suggests reasons for why Charles Houston is not well known.
Part one. After serving in World War II, Wiley Branton returned to discriminatory voter registration laws in his home state of Arkansas. He participated in voter education and was arrested and convicted (wrongfully) of rigging an election. This incident inspired him to go to law school. He participated in forcing the integration of University of Arkansas Law School in 1947. He describes Jim Crow professional schools in the South. Part two. Mr. Branton recalls the Moore v. Dempsey case from his childhood. Mr. Branton goes over a case he tried in eastern Arkansas called State of Arkansas v. Paul Lewis Beckwith. Mr. Branton discusses his childhood. He talks about desegregation in Arkansas and the education situation for African Americans at the time of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Interestingly, some eastern Arkansas school districts integrated immediately after Brown. Mr. Branton talks about his many legal actions to get Little Rock schools integrated. Part three. Mr. Branton describes the Little Rock Crisis and its legal aftermath. He remembers the Arkansas governor closing public schools after the Army left, an action that damaged the Arkansas economy. Mr. Branton discusses Charles Houston. Branton returns to his own experiences during the Little Rock Crisis: His family lived under armed guard for two years and crosses were burned at his family cemetery. Mr. Branton talks about his legal representation of Freedom Riders in Jackson, Mississippi. Part five. Mr. Branton discusses how bail was raised for Freedom Riders in Mississippi and Arkansas. Mr. Branton discusses the Voter Education Project, which he directed from 1962 to 1965. He tells about the project's programs to support small, local voter registration groups with money and advice on handling obstacles. He recalls registrars blocking African Americans from registering by administering outrageous tests. Mr. Branton reveals that he would let white sheriffs think he was white, too, when talking to them on the phone in order to get people out of jail.
Leslie Nuchow, New York singer songwriter, discusses her offer from the label Phillip Morris: Women Thing Music and what led to her to anti tobacco industry activism.
Part one. Professor Beulah Johnson reviews being a teacher in Tuskegee, Alabama, living in a segregated society, what the "black" part of town was like, voter registration, her involvement with the NAACP, what the New South is, the Reagan Administration, and teaching history properly. Part two. Mrs. Johnson details the Tuskegee Civic Association, gerrymandering, the importance of economic power, William P. Mitchell, and community involvement meetings. She also recalls the African American boycott of businesses in Tuskegee when whites refused to vouch for potential African American voters. Part three. Shots of Beulah Johnson's Tuskegee house and neighborhood. At 3:40 change to William Elwood interviewing Mayor Johnny Ford outside Tuskegee municipal building about the impact of the Voting Rights Act, Gomillion v. Lightfoot case, Fred Gray, and being mayor for 15 years. At 12:05 change to Elwood interviewing civil rights attorney Solomon S. Seay, Jr., in Montgomery about Seay's background and education, his military service experience, and watching the top Brown v. Board of Education lawyers practice the case at Howard Law School.
Farzaneh Milani, professor of Middle Eastern & South Asian Languages & Cultures at the University of Virginia, discusses her latest op-ed piece for The New York Times and the experience of women in a Islamic conservative Iran.
Jenny Ganell, discusses her role in the Hetrick-Martin Institute in New York City, which hopes to create a safe space for gay, lesbian, and transgender students in their high school years.
Chinta Gaston, graduate of Virginia Law is discusses her role in the United States Attorney's Office, and her role in Kroll Law Firm with bringing justice in the lawsuits dealing with sex discrimination.
Helena Lewis is a cultural historian of 20th Century France discusses the life of Jewish Russo-French "committed" writer Elsa Triolet. Her focus has been on surrealism and intellectuals from World War II.
Smith, Charles (Charles William), 1893-, Helms, James Strother, 1926-1959
Summary:
One of several films produced about prominent University of Virginia faculty, written and directed by James S. Helms. This film summarizes the career of Augusta County-born artist Charles W. Smith, covering his early print-making career as well as his stylistic shift to non-representational art. Smith is depicted working in his studio, showing his unique methodology of "block painting".
Part one. James Duren explains how he became an activist for education in Clarendon County, South Carolina, by uncovering corruption in Clarendon School District One. He formed a parents group that grew into 200 members to fight the misuse of money by the district. Other parents describe how they became involved and actions they took to try to change the situation. Summmerton in Clarendon County, South Carolina, was the district involved in Briggs v. Elliott, one of the cases in Brown v. Board of Education. Part two. Clarendon County business people and parents of students in Clarendon School District One describe the fraud, mismanagement and extremely low educational standards of the district. Part three. Similar content to Disc 204. Part four. Clarendon County business people and parents of students in Clarendon School District One discuss race relations in South Carolina in the 1980s, as well as the many problems with Clarendon School District 1. Part five. Similar content to Disc 206.
Drewary Brown talks about social and economic life in Charlottesville during the civil rights era and in 1987. Mr. Brown walks down the Mall in Charlottesville. At 12:37, interview with Florence Bryant in front of Jefferson School in Charlottesville. Ms. Bryant discusses the work of the NAACP on behalf of teachers. She mentions J. Rupert Picott, Aline Black, and Melvin Austin as instrumental in helping African American teachers get equal pay in Virginia in 1940. See also reports her involvement in desegregating schools in Charlottesville. She regards Charlottesville as a leader in desegregation.
Part one. Judge Higginbotham asserts that the United States Constitution was not revelant to African Americans when it was written except to further enslave them. Judge Higginbotham offers a legal history of the colonies and slavery. Slavery was not codified until 1660, Virginia was the mother of slavery, and Virginia law in the early 1800s made it illegal to teach African Americans to read and write. Judge Higginbotham talks about Charles Coatsworth Pinckney, Judge Ruffin, and how America's success was only possible via slave labor. Part two. Judge Higginbotham's history lesson continues. The 14th amendment was intended to take racism out of American society via due process, but it became the primary instrument to help corporations and everyone else but African Americans. Plessy v. Ferguson codified the separate but equal doctrine, which extended discrimination from trains to just about everywhere else, as the Supreme Court had said it was “reasonable” to do so. The warped interpretation of the 14th amendment impacted women as well. The US Constitution was also originally meaningless to women. Higginbotham discusses Justice Harlan's dissent in Plessy. Part three. Judge Higginbotham explains that Brown v. Board of Education was brought about by earlier cases. Brown was the ninth inning victory compared to all the work that had gone before in civil rights, including Gaines v. Missouri, Sweatt v. Painter, and McLaurin v. Oklahoma. Higginbotham discusses Collins Seitz, first state judge to order desegregation of a school. He also talks about Charles Hamilton Houston, William Hastie, Thurgood Marshall, and Howard University Law School. Part four. Judge Higginbotham recalls the Marian Anderson incident in Philadelphia in 1939. He also discusses the extension of legal strategy in civil rights cases beyond education into employment and voting rights, as in Smith v. Allwright. Higginbotham details the extensive pattern of violence in the South and the manipulation of the voter registration process. For example, registrars would ask African Americans for absurd qualification information, such as the number of gallons of water in the ocean. Judge Higginbotham recalls cases about labor unions, railways, housing rights, restrictive covenants in the 1940s, and fair housing in 1968. Part five. Judge Higginbotham's advice to young people: don't try to save the entire world, try to save the people next to you. Higginbotham discusses Powell v. Alabama, the Scottsboro case, Brown v. Mississippi, and John W. Davis.
Footage of cocktail conversations during reception for Old Dominion Bar Association convention. Participants unknown. Footage of drive through Chicago to the Supreme Life Building, footage inside the building.
Part one. Footage of Monticello exterior. At 6:18, interview with history professor William H. Harbaugh at Monticello. Mr. Harbaugh talks about John W. Davis as the greatest appellate attorney and outlines Davis's career. Harbaugh discusses Davis's most famous cases, including his unsuccessful defense of the separate but equal doctrine in the Brown v. Board of Education cases. Part one. Harbaugh describes the irony of John W. Davis defending the separate but equal doctrine in Brown and explains why Davis took the case as its appellate lawyer. Harbaugh also comments on Thurgood Marshall's opinion of Davis. At 9:20 interview with engineer and business professor Louis T. Rader begins. Mr. Rader talks about his life and career, as well as his support of public education in the promotion of a successful business climate. During Massive Resistance, he protested closing Virginia public schools using the argument that businesses don't want to operate in a community with poor schooling.
