Virginia Vignettes

Opposition to President Harry Truman’s civil rights proposals caused many Southerners to join a National States Rights Party and nominate Governor Strom Thurmond of South Carolina for president in 1948. These “Dixiecrats” hoped to unite the South behind Thurmond and throw the election into the House of Representatives. Not wanting to jeopardize the election prospects of Virginia [...]

Cockacoeske was married to the Pamunkey chief Totopotomoy, who was killed in 1656 while fighting as an ally of the English, at what became known as the Battle of Bloody Run. Following his death, she became the chief, or weroansqua, of the tribe. She was known to the English as the Queen of the Pamunkey. [...]

During the 1980s eight Virginia Indian tribes obtained formal recognition from the Commonwealth, although the Pamunkey and Mattaponi had retained their reservations and had been observing their treaty relationship all along. The other tribes are Chickahominy, Chickahominy Eastern Division, Monacan, Nansemond, Rappahannock, and Upper Mattaponi.
In recent decades, the tribes have worked hard to reclaim their cultural [...]

Walter Plecker became the state registrar of the division of Vital Statistics in Richmond in 1912 and remained in his position until 1946. He was a staunch advocate for the eugenics movement, the pseudo-science of race. Plecker believed that there should be only two races of people in Virginia, white and “colored,” that white people [...]