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From Suffrage to the Senate America's Political Women: An Encyclopedia of Leaders, Causes & Issues

Durr, Virginia Heard Foster (1903-1999)

Called “the white matriarch of the civil rights movement,” Virginia Foster Durr began her life as a Southern belle in Alabama, living in the world of contradictions that confronted white women in the racist South of the early twentieth century. After attending Wellesley College for two years, Durr married Clifford Durr, a lawyer who became part of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal. Their move to Washington, D.C., led to Virginia Durr meeting Eleanor Roosevelt and joining her in efforts to end the poll tax, a tax that served to disenfranchise African Americans. Virginia Durr also became friends with Mary McLeod Bethune, the most prominent African American in the Roosevelt administration, and Mary Church Terrell, the first president of the National Association of Colored Women. Through these two women, Virginia Durr’s acceptance of racism ended and her journey to becoming a civil rights activist began.

The Durrs returned to Alabama in 1951 and Virginia Durr soon joined the only interracial political group in Montgomery, Alabama. Through her activism, Durr met Rosa Parks, who started the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955. The Durrs helped arrange Parks’ release on bail, and Virginia Durr began a decade of involvement with the civil rights movement. Over the years, she housed civil rights workers and endured social ostracism by the white community.

Virginia Durr unsuccessfully ran for the United States Senate in Virginia on the Progressive Party ticket in 1948.

See also: Bethune, Mary McLeod; Civil Rights Movement, Women in the; Parks, Rosa; Terrell, Mary Church

References: Los Angeles Times, February 26, 1999; Olson, Freedom’s Daughters: The Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement from 1830 to 1970 (2001); The New York Times, February 26, 1999; The Washington Post, February 25, 1999.

Citation Types

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Format
MLA 9th
"Durr, Virginia Heard Foster (1903-1999)." From Suffrage to the Senate America's Political Women: An Encyclopedia of Leaders, Causes & Issues, edited by Suzanne O’Dea, Salem Press, 2019. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Suffrage3e_0284.
APA 7th
Durr, Virginia Heard Foster (1903-1999). From Suffrage to the Senate America's Political Women: An Encyclopedia of Leaders, Causes & Issues, In S. O’Dea (Ed.), Salem Press, 2019. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Suffrage3e_0284.
CMOS 17th
"Durr, Virginia Heard Foster (1903-1999)." From Suffrage to the Senate America's Political Women: An Encyclopedia of Leaders, Causes & Issues, Edited by Suzanne O’Dea. Salem Press, 2019. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Suffrage3e_0284.