The fortieth anniversary of the 1963 Danville civil rights demonstrations passed earlier this year [2003] with merely a brief mention in the press.  In the summer of 1963, violence erupted in Danville, Virginia, as the Danville establishment led by Police Chief Eugene G. McCain struggled to keep Jim Crow order during a series of civil rights demonstrations led by local and national black leaders.  Of the 45 demonstrators arrested in front of the city jail on 10 June, nearly all required medical attention at the hospital for injuries that some defendants testified were the result of being pistol-whipped or struck with nightsticks.  As evidenced in the Civil Rights Demonstrations Cases legal files on microfilm and audio compact discs at the Library of Virginia, sporadic demonstrations continued until late August 1963 despite the violence.

In the late summer of 1999, the Danville Circuit Clerk of Court transferred the legal files of the Civil Rights Demonstration Cases to the Library of Virginia for processing due to security concerns and preservation issues.  Jay Gaidmore, the archivist charged with organizing and describing the collection, wrote in his Spring 2001 Delimiter article that the collection spanned the years 1963–1973 and included “bills of particulars, bond records, correspondence, court dockets, court orders, Dictabelts, evidence, judgments, petitions, photographs, receipts, subpoenas, and transcripts of testimony that document the legal aspects of the civil rights demonstrations from the Danville Corporation Court to the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals.”  After processing had been completed, a grant secured from the Virginia Circuit Court Records Preservation Program allowed for the subsequent microfilming of these court files.  By early spring 2001, the microfilm collection had opened to patrons and students of the Civil Rights Movement.

While this new visual civil rights resource now was open to researchers, archival efforts to preserve the audio contents on the collection’s 130 Dictabelts were only in the initial stages.  During the Danville Corporation Court civil rights trials, a Dictaphone machine operated constantly (even in closed judge’s chambers) and the resulting Dictabelts contained a full account of the court proceedings heard from 13 December 1966 to 6 April 1967.  Prevalent in courtrooms and insurance offices in the 1960s, the Dictabelt was the acetate-based medium for the once-popular Dictaphone machine, a groove and stylus-type recording device introduced in 1947 but virtually non-extant and rarely used by the late 1970s.  After inserting a Dictabelt into the machine, a pair of mandrels rotated the belt-shaped medium while a lead screw guided a stylus across the belt.  The stylus, driven by the amplified signal from a microphone, cut a groove in the belt and thus stored a signal that could then be played back on the same machine.  While this method produced fairly high-quality recordings of the court proceedings, a Dictaphone machine in good working condition is a particularly rare find today.  The Library and the Clerk’s office recognized that if action were not taken to convert these antiquated sound files, the audio testimony might be lost forever.  A grant from the Virginia Circuit Court Records Preservation Program enabled the Library to convert the dictabelts to compact discs.  Completed in July 2003, the compact discs provide over 85 hours of powerful testimony of Virginia’s civil rights struggle, which could have been lost to history.

Some of the compact discs are mundane recordings of court docket readings and other typical trial procedures, but a careful listening reveals the truth behind the violent demonstrations and the reasons for the demonstrators’ participation.  In one trial, defense attorney Ruth L. Harvey questioned 46-year-old demonstrator Paul Price, who testified he was beaten with a nightstick as he walked away from a demonstration in front of the Danville City Jail on 10 June.  During cross examination Danville city attorney James A. H. Ferguson implies that Price’s injuries may have been caused when he struck a light pole as he ran from police.  In another trial Emmett Lee Banks and Clyde L. Banks, brothers residing in Chatham in Pittsylvania County, state that they came down to Danville to demonstrate as a protest against the exclusion of a black member from the local school board.  In a similar statement, Leonard Winston Chase, minister at High Street Baptist Church in Danville, asserted that he encouraged the demonstrations due to his frustration stemming from the Danville Police Department’s refusal to hire a black police officer.

Listen to Prosecutor’s cross-examination

Listen to Ruth Harvey’s examination

Listen to Prosecutor’s cross-examination

This new audio resource includes a finding aid containing a list of the audio contents on each compact disc.  By utilizing this finding aid to locate attorney arguments and specific witness and defendant testimony, students of the Civil Rights Movement now will be able to hear first-hand voice accounts given by the demonstrators and police and the tactics used by the attorneys to defend and prosecute the demonstrators.  Patrons may access the media in the Archives and Manuscripts Reading Room at the Library of Virginia, where a compact disc player with headphones is available.

-Alex Lorch, former Personal Papers Archivist.  Lorch is now Program Officer for the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC).

In August 1999, the city of Danville’s Circuit Court Clerk approached Glenn Smith, Grants Administrator of the Virginia Circuit Court Records Preservation Program, with a dilemma.  The city possessed a box of heavily used materials relating to the 1963 Danville civil rights demonstrations.  Concerned about both the preservation and security of the collection due to high volume usage, the clerk agreed to have the material transferred to LVA for processing and organization so that it could be microfilmed.  Though a local records collection, I was assigned the task of processing the material because of my past research on John W. Carter, a former Danville city councilman who aided the Commonwealth’s Attorney in prosecuting the civil rights demonstrators.  I interviewed Carter for my thesis on the Virginia Conservative Party on several occasions.  This was a segregationist third political party formed in 1965 to oppose Mills Godwin’s campaign for governor.  Godwin had angered many by supporting Lyndon B. Johnson during the 1964 Presidential campaign, and Johnson in turn had angered segregationists with the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  Carter was a founding member of the party and a candidate for Attorney-General and United States Senator on the party’s ticket.  During these interviews, he spoke in detail about his role in the Danville saga.  Due to my interest in the topic, I gladly accepted the task of processing this collection and being part of an effort to preserve materials that document such an important chapter in Virginia’s history.

When images of the civil rights movement come to mind, most individuals picture African American demonstrators being attacked by police dogs, or assaulted with fire hoses and nightsticks in cities like Selma and Birmingham, Alabama, and in Mississippi.  Virginia is not often associated with the violence that plagued much of the southeastern U.S. during the height of the civil rights movement of the 1960’s.  In fact, while Virginia did experience sit-ins and demonstrations in Lynchburg, Richmond, Petersburg, Farmville, and other cities, the protests never deteriorated into violence.  In the summer of 1963, however, Danville proved the exception.

On 31 May 1963, civil rights demonstrations began peacefully in Danville and ended without incident, the police making no arrests and the local press ignoring the demonstration.  However, on 5 June, the demonstrations became more unruly as participants sat down on Main Street in order to impede traffic.  The police quickly summoned Judge Archibald M. Aiken, judge of the Danville Corporation Court, to the scene, and he ordered the demonstrators to disperse.  The demonstrators, however, refused, prompting Aiken to issue a temporary injunction the next day ordering the demonstrators to desist from assembling in an unlawful manner, interfering with traffic and business, obstructing entrances to businesses and public buildings, participating in and inciting mob violence, and using loud language that disrupts the peace.  In addition to the foregoing injunction, Aiken convened a special grand jury, which indicted the demonstration leaders under a slavery-era law known as “John Brown’s Law” that made inciting the black population to “acts of violence or war against the white population” illegal.  Also, the Danville City Council, under the leadership of attorney and staunch segregationist John W. Carter, adopted two ordinances limiting the size, place, and time of demonstrations and requiring a permit to parade.  Despite Aiken’s and the city council’s attempts, the demonstrations continued.  Civil rights activists from the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) soon arrived in Danville to participate in the demonstrations.

On 10 June, after a full day of protests, the police, with nightsticks and fire hoses, attacked the demonstrators picketing the city jail.  Forty-seven of the 50 demonstrators required medical attention for their resulting injuries.  Despite the violence, the demonstrations continued and by mid-July over 250 people had been arrested on charges of contempt, trespassing, disorderly conduct, assault, parading without a permit, and resisting arrest.  Danville police resorted to arresting the parents of jailed demonstrators when they arrived at the jail to post bail for their sons and daughters.  The mothers and fathers were charged with contributing to the delinquency of minors by not providing adequate parental supervision.

The collection contains court papers and legal files spanning the years 1963-1973 and includes bills of particulars, bond records, correspondence, court dockets, court orders, dictabelts, evidence, judgments, petitions, photographs, receipts, subpoenas, and transcripts of testimony that document the legal aspects of the civil rights demonstrations from the Danville Corporation Court to the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals.

In addition, the collection included 130 dictabelts, plastic belts about 3.5 inches wide and 12 inches around, mechanically recorded using an engraving process and replayed with a stylus similar to that of a record player.  These dictabelts are an antiquated recording medium with very few machines available for replay.  The clerk was concerned that the contents of these dictabelts would be lost forever if they were not converted to a modern recording medium.  A grant from the Virginia Circuit Court Records Preservation Program enabled the Library to microfilm the records and to convert the dictabelts to compact discs.

The 1963 Danville Civil Rights Case Files are available for research at the Library of Virginia and should prove to be an important source for those interested in of the civil rights movement in Virginia.  The finding aid for this collection can be viewed here.

-Jay Gaidmore, formerly Private Papers Program Manager at the Library of Virginia.  Jay is currently the University Archivist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  He is a contributor to the UNC blog,  For the Record:  News and and Perspectives from University Archives and Records Management Services.

Jan, who is very active in the study and promotion of the history of the Wayland area of Norfolk, England, recently gave a talk to the Wayland Heritage Group.  She shared the story of the original letters, the memories they brought up, and the new trans-Atlantic friendships forged thanks to archives and the Internet.  You can see her talk by clicking the link in this Wayland News article.  

 -Jessica Tyree, Senior Accessioning Archivist

In case you missed it, the Library of Virginia’s conservation of the gubernatorial papers of Thomas Jefferson was featured in Style Weekly. The letters and manuscripts documenting Jefferson’s service as the second governor of Virginia are being conserved thanks to a $110,000 grant from Save America’s Treasures. For more information on the collection and the grant see an earlier blog post about it here.

 Edwin Ray, Reference Services Librarian, was featured in a Wall Street Journal story about the recent rethinking of accepted Civil War casualty figures. Ray is the driving force behind the Virginia Military Dead database which draws from 937 different  sources to document the death of Virginia soldiers in service to Great Britain, the United States of America, and the Confederates States of America. The database is an ongoing project and should prove useful to historians and genealogists.

 A Los Angeles Times story gave a touching account of the CW 150 Project’s visit to Warrenton. Renee Savits, Senior Project Archivist, is part of a team that is travelling the state to digitize Civil War-related documents that have, until now, remained hidden from public view in family hands. We are so happy to know that these stories will be preserved for future generations.

 -Dale Dulaney, Local Records Archival Assistant.

In case you missed it the CW 150 Legacy Project ‘s visit to the Campbell County courthouse in Rustburg was featured recently in the Richmond Times-Dispatch and on WSET-TV which covers Lynchburg, Danville, and Roanoke. See the newspaper story here and the video here. Both stories cover the project’s continuing mission to to locate Civil War-era materials held by private citizens, digitize them, and place them online.

(The following editorial is reprinted here courtesy of the Smyth County News & Messenger. It originally ran 28 July 2010.)

HUMBLING CHAPTER OF OUR STORY

In some ways it is difficult to read. Just the title “Register of Colored Persons of Smyth County, State of Virginia, Cohabitating Together as Husband and Wife on 27 February, 1866″ speaks of discrimination so powerful that the institution of marriage between a man and woman was not recognized. As you read across the columns and come to “Last Owner,” the reality of slavery existing in Seven Mile Ford, Rich Valley, Marion and Rye Valley takes hold.

The names of those registered and their last owners resonate as familiar: Campbell, Carter, Fowler, Heath, James and Tate among many others.

As news of this register’s existence was announced this week, Circuit Court Clerk John Graham reflected, “When you see this document, you’re reminded that slavery was not just an institution somewhere in the South. It was a way of life right here in Smyth County. This remarkable document brings history home.”

Despite the challenges it presents us, this register is a national treasure of incalculable value.

Prior to this document recording and formalizing their marriages, which Virginia law didn’t recognize before the Civil War ended in 1865, the existence of many of these individuals had never been listed in a public record. Yet, here is official acknowledgment of marriages, places of birth, and children born to those couples. The value and interest to genealogists and historians is obvious, but we see connections to people and glimpses of their stories that intersect with our own lives.

The youngest man on the list, 21-year-old Samuel Montgomery, and 23-year-old Amanda had been together for about three years. They were the parents of 18-month-old John and 4-month-old Grant. One can only wonder how they met. Samuel was a native of Smyth County and his last owner lived in Seven Mile Ford. Amanda was a native of Fauquier County, and her last owner resided in Kanawha County.

70-year-old Thomas Hays, a farmer living in Rich Valley whose last owner also lived in Rich Valley, was a widower. His wife, Maria, was dead, but their union had finally been recognized officially.

Antony Fields, 29, was born in Mississippi and owned as a slave in Wythe County, but he and 23-year-old Roda, who had been owned by the same man, were making a home in Smyth County for their family, which included 3-year-old Isaac and 16-month-old Anna.

21-year-old Edmond Reed and 19-year-old Mary were married on Christmas Day in 1865.

The register includes people who were newlyweds and couples married for decades, people who knew the joys and exhaustion of parenthood, the agony of grief, and what it meant to till the soil and pray that weather cooperated and seasons brought good crops.

Yet, they also knew what most of us cannot – what it meant to be a slave.

The register is quite simple, but the names, words and dates it records tell a truth of our community that can open many doors for families, historians, students and anyone who chooses to read and reflect upon it.

It is not easy to read as truth so often is not, but the register is now part of Smyth County’s story, our story.

(A team from the Local Records department of the LVA recently returned copies of the newly restored Smyth County Cohabitation Register to the Circuit Court Clerk John Graham and conducted a records inventory in the courthouse. To see the accompanying front-page story click here. To see the original blog entry for the Smyth County Cohabitation Register click here.)