Mar 20 at 10:30 AM - Sale 2697 -

Sale 2697 - Lot 97

Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
(CIVIL RIGHTS.) Leon A. Reid and Wiley A. Hall. Letter to a state rep from the Virginia League for the Repeal of the Segregation Laws. Mimeographed Letter Signed to Virgil Goode of Rocky Mount, VA, member of the Virginia House of Representatives. 2 pages, 11 x 8½ inches, on the League's letterhead; mailing folds, minimal foxing. Richmond, VA, 29 January 1944
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This letter urges a white state representative to help repeal the state's Jim Crow public transportation laws. It argues that "the presumed object of the law was to prevent friction and racial conflict between the two races," but "public education has practically eliminated the conditions which prompted the passage of the original law. The present operation of this law, instead of preventing racial friction and conflict, actually creates both. The requirement that Negroes must push their way through wartime-crowded cars and buses to the rear and back again, causes confusion and breaches of the peace; and the practice is just as objectionable to the white passengers as to the Negroes themselves. . . . At the present time, thousands of travelers are brought to or through Virginia by heavy concentration of camps in our area. Entering our State, they experience their first contact with segregation."

These letters were sent to all members of the Virginia Legislature, which we know because their receipt was discussed five days later in the Richmond News Leader on 3 February 1944. We find no other mention of the Virginia League for the Repeal of the Segregation Laws before this splash, but their effort was discussed at length in the February 1944 issue of The Crisis. The Baltimore Afro-American on 26 February 1944 noted that none of the Virginia legislators had expressed hostility to the proposal, but none had agreed to sponsor the needed legislation. We find no further mention of the League after that point.

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