Featured Grants
Mapping Local Knowledge: Danville, Va. 1945-1975
U.Va. Center for Digital History
$10,000 awarded March 2008
In the summer of 1963, Danville, Virginia, was the scene of civil rights protests, violence, and subsequent legal and political challenges to the underpinnings of Jim Crow segregation. Local resistance to change was so pronounced that the New York Times called it “the most unyielding, ingenious, legalistic, and effective of any city in the South.” The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the NAACP all dispatched state and national leaders to assist the Danville protestors. Still, the jails overflowed; and the impact of the violence and its legal aftermath continues to be felt. But until very recently, the history and legacy of these protests and their importance within the broader context of the Civil Rights Movement remained largely unexamined.
In 1998-99, Emma Edmunds, a native of Halifax County and a former Executive Editor of Atlanta Magazine researched the history of the 1963 events in Danville and the racial history of the surrounding region, beginning a long-term effort that has resulted in more than thirty in-depth interviews with current and former residents of Danville and Halifax County, black and white, as well as a traveling exhibit based on the research and interviews.
VFH funds awarded this past March are supporting the creation of an on-line version of the physical exhibit and additional research and interviews. This work is being done in partnership with the University of Virginia’s Center for Digital History, which is also serving as the grantee. The project also complements other current efforts by the VFH in Southside Virginia, including a Teaching American History grant which focuses in part on the history of civil rights in this region.
Danville’s is an important story within the broader context of the Civil Rights Movement, but one that is largely unknown today, even within the community itself, and one that has not been explored in depth by other scholars.
