Virginia Vignettes

Although it had high hopes of burying “demon rum,” the Virginia Prohibition Commission found the task of enforcing the law overwhelming. Smuggling networks infiltrated from the Midwest into the Shenandoah Valley, from Maryland down the Eastern Shore, and at any convenient Chesapeake Bay landing site. Furthermore, local moonshining became a popular and lucrative enterprise, notably [...]

Populism was a broad-based farmers’ movement that attempted to address the problems of low commodity prices and unfair competition experienced by farmers in the late nineteenth century. Through the Grange and then the Farmers’ Alliance they created cooperatives and sought railroad rate regulation to reduce their costs and eliminate monopolistic practices. Failing to achieve these goals, [...]

Traditional racial attitudes were certainly a factor in the creation of massive resistance. Age-old customs and attitudes that had been legalized for half a century were challenged by the Brown decision of 1954. The loudest voices defending the overturned separate-but-equal policy came from the Southside, where the black percentage of the population was highest and [...]

By virtue of service and power, Harry Flood Byrd Sr. was the most prominent Virginian of the twentieth century. As a state senator, governor, and U.S. senator, Byrd made notable contributions to his state and nation, but it was through his leadership of the Democratic political organization–the “Byrd machine”–that he wielded the authority that shaped [...]