Virginia Vignettes

Sarah Patton Boyle was one of Virginia’s most prominent white civil rights activist during the 1950s and 1960s and author of the widely acclaimed autobiography, The Desegregated Heart: A Virginian’s Stand in Time of Transition (1962). Her efforts began with an awkward and hesitant welcome to the University of Virginia’s first black law student in 1950, in which she argued for gradual desegregation. Her views, however, as well as her ability to express them, quickly matured, until she became a leading and often controversial white voice for immediate desegregation in public schools and higher education. A 1955 article for the Saturday Evening Post, titled “Southerners Will Like Integration,” prompted a fierce backlash that included a cross burned in her Charlottesville yard. Boyle did not moderate her views, however, and worked closely with the NAACP, earning praise from Martin Luther King Jr., Lillian Smith, and others, as well as numerous awards and a measure of national fame. The intensity of her political involvement triggered in Boyle a deep depression, and she eventually became disillusioned with the civil rights movement, retiring from her activism in 1967. In 1983, she authored a memoir that contemplated her experience dealing with age discrimination.

Further Reading:

Sarah Patton Boyle, The Desegregated Heart: A Virginian’s Stand in Time of Transition (1962, 2001)

This Vignette Provided By

Jennifer Ritterhouse, who teaches history at Utah State University. She is the author of Growing Up Jim Crow: How Black and White Southern Children Learned Race (2006).