Systematically Done In

By 1965, the VRA not only revolutionized electoral politics in the United States but also immediately gave rise to white resistance. This chapter describes the freedom struggle’s progression from protest to politics and how African Americans took their place in American city halls. By 1966, Richmond had elected three African Americans to the city council, including Henry Marsh III. As black Americans began to elect more than a handful of representatives and to contest the legacy of segregationist policies (e.g., slum clearance, expressway construction, police brutality), whites embarked on a Machiavellian campaign of vote dilution. In Richmond, they first tried to dilute blacks votes by staggering elections. The urban unrest of the late 1960s and the rise of Black Power heightened white anxiety about a black revolution. By 1968, the Crusade embraced not only the politics of black empowerment but also Martin Luther King Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign. Richmond’s white officials met these challenges by annexing portions of a predominantly white suburb, Chesterfield County.

“The Dream Is Lost”

The realization of black governance proved to be one of the freedom struggle’s most enduring legacies. So too was the continuation of white resistance. Chapter 4 describes the unintended consequences of majority–minority districts and black governance. African Americans may have taken control of city hall, but they lacked the types of private relationships needed to govern. The black-majority council and black regimes had inherited a “hollow prize”—the legacy of segregationist policies and demographic forces (e.g., the suburbanization of jobs and people) had taken their toll on predominantly African American cities. As Richmond’s black regime opposed their position as cue takers and tried to redirect resources to impoverished communities, whites embarked on another crusade of obstructionism. This obstructionism was made worse by the black-majority council’s firing of city manager Bill Leidinger and push for the need to redistrict. Between 1978 and 1982, racial factionalism impeded downtown revitalization, undermined the black-majority council in the court of public opinion, and gave rise to anti-VRA sentiment. By 1982, an African American named Roy West not only promised to restore racial harmony to city hall but also beat incumbent Willie Dell. Dell may have emerged as a champion for vulnerable communities, but she was a victim of gendered and racial assumptions about black female leadership and redistricting.

From Intent to Effect

Chapter 3 describes how local African Americans, with the help of the U.S. Congress, federal courts, and the U.S. Department of Justice, instigated the reapportionment revolution after 1965. This revolution carried the spirit of civil rights reform, the Great Society, and President Lyndon Johnson’s equality-of-results standard well into the 1970s. After the Supreme Court’s decision in Allen v. State Board of Elections (1969) to expand the implications of the VRA’s preclearance clause in section 5, antidilution litigation began to flood America’s court system. African American public-housing resident Curtis Holt Sr. and white suburbanites eventually sued to deannex Chesterfield County, but for very different reasons. The white residents of the annexed area saw annexation as a way to continue passive resistance to school integration. Holt’s suit led the Supreme Court to place what became a seven-year moratorium on city council elections. This suit not only plugged Richmond into the Burger Court’s campaign against vote dilution but also eventually culminated in the implementation of Richmond’s majority–minority district system. Local politics in Richmond had national implications. Litigation (e.g., City of Richmond v. United States [1975]), the Supreme Court, and the Department of Justice played a critical role in the monumental election of a black-majority council in Richmond in 1977.

“All He Gave Me Was a Foot”

Chapter 5 describes how structural forces beyond the realm of politics led to fissures in black leadership. Urban retrenchment, rising poverty and crime, and the persistence of residential segregation had taken their toll on Richmond, the black-majority council, and the Crusade by the 1980s. As the Reagan administration put New Federalism into action, cities struggled to pay the bills. Black leaders struggled to meet these challenges; they also no longer agreed on how to solve their communities’ mounting problems. Women such as Alma Barlow led the charge against the black establishment. Yet Roy West defeated Willie Dell more soundly in 1984, and his victory symbolized the arrival of technocratic, middle-class black politicians. Technocrats such as West supplanted the first wave of civil rights–era black politicians—a phenomenon that was not specific to Richmond. West, who was Richmond’s second black mayor, became the cause célèbre when he secured 30 percent set-asides for minority business contracts. These contracts did little, however, to address the poverty that enveloped Richmond. By 1986, the Crusade failed to challenge West’s approach to black governance. After allegations of discrimination in municipal employment rocked city hall, African Americans realized that the Crusade’s strictly political approach to the freedom struggle had fallen short.

Strictly Political

Chapter 1 reimagines the origins of the civil rights movement by examining the suffrage crusades that predated the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965. The women and men of the Richmond Crusade for Voters were the legatees of a drawn-out struggle against racist civility and white paternalism in Virginia. Moderate racial reforms, led by men such as Gordon Blaine Hancock, characterized race relations in Richmond before the 1950s. Brown v. Board of Education (1954) ended racist civility in Virginia. The Crusade and the National Organization for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) more immediately emerged in opposition to massive resistance to public-school integration and racist urban-renewal policies. This organization eventually outmobilized Harry Byrd’s political machine by paying poll taxes. With the help of the NAACP and its “Miracle of 1960” campaign, the Crusade elected an African American, B.A. “Sonny” Cephas, to the Richmond City Council in 1964.

Introduction

The introduction provides an overview of the American civil rights movement in Richmond, Virginia, and describes how slavery and segregation shaped Richmond’s development well into the twentieth century. The Dream Is Lost provides a narrative of Richmond’s contributions to the freedom struggle and the city coming to terms with racial political trends in America after 1965. The book aims to connect three subjects: 1) it demonstrates how middle-class African Americans used politics as a means to empower their communities; 2) the narrative emphasizes how local people helped influence national voting rights policy during the civil rights movement; and, 3) it delineates how race and racism shaped policy and politics in Richmond well into the twentieth century.

Conclusion

The epilogue demonstrates how the struggle for civil rights continued well beyond the 1970s. It also mentions how the crusade left a lasting impression on politics in the commonwealth’s capital. The epilogue describes contemporary downtown Richmond and the “renaissance” or revitalization the city is experiencing. The epilogue suggests that the struggle for equal rights continues to this day with many African Americans falling below the poverty line, living in public housing, and attending schools with a below-average graduation rate.