New Directions in Virginia's Civil Rights History

Beginning of article

IN his comprehensive and illuminating historiographical essay, Brent Tarter has produced a concise and analytical overview of what currently exists on library bookshelves about Virginia history, and he offers suggestions how this collection, vast though it is, may be supplemented with new interpretations as well as new areas of inquiry. One facet of Virginia history that has long been ignored is the commonwealth's place in the black civil rights movement of the mid-twentieth century. The modern civil rights movement is one of the most compelling and monumental episodes in our nation's history. Virginia, like the rest of the country, particularly the South, played a significant part in it. …