The Civil Rights Movement and Hampton Roads Student SS310-07: Exploring the 1960s Professor Susan Fournier

The Effects of the Civil Right Movements in the Hampton Roads of Virginia The civil right movements of the 1960s had major effects in the Hampton Roads of Virginia especially Norfolk, Virginia Beach and Portsmouth. As you walk the streets of Hampton Roads or read recent articles in the Virginia Post, you can see the change in churches, parks, monuments and schools and an increase of peoples’ rights like interracial marriages. Hampton Roads has grown so much since the civil rights movements and it is growing more and more every year. The progress is such a relief with positive moves in the right direction like the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial. Hampton Roads is a military city and there is so much respect for military personnel. Gays and lesbians are receiving more rights also.

African American School in Halifax County Very few black Virginians received education until all public schools were established; therefore, most black Virginians were thrilled to have any free education. Black schools were controlled by white state government for funding so these schools had fewer books, worse buildings and less well paid teachers. Until Booker T Washington who was born a slave in Virginia. His approach of not directly confronting racial inequality but uplifting people through education.

Booker T Washington High School Norfolk, VA Entrance to High School2010 Senior Basketball Team

My Church: Calvary Revival Church Norfolk VA Inside Calvary RevivalMy Pastor, Courtney McBath

Virginia Civil Rights Memorial Richmond VA

Interesting Fact Involving Virginia and the Civil Rights Movement Because of the Loving vs. Virginia (1967), Loving Day is an annual celebration held on June 12 representing the United States Supreme Court decision which got rid of all anti-miscegenation laws that banned interracial marriages mostly forbidding marriages between non-whites and whites. The courts wrote: “Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival.... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.”

References: Department of General Services. (2011). Virginia Civil Rights Memorial. McBath, Courtney. (2011) B. Courtney McBath Ministries. Retrieved from NPR. (2007). Loving Decision: 40 Years of Legal Interracial Unions. Retrieved from Virginia Historical Society. (2011). The Civil Rights Movement in Virginia. Retrieved from