Virginia Foster Durr

Virginia Foster Durr (August 6, 1903 – February 24, 1999) was an American civil rights activist and lobbyist.

She was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1903 to Dr. Sterling Foster, an Alabama Presbyterian minister, and Ann Patterson Foster.

At 22 she married lawyer Clifford Durr, with whom she had 5 children, one of whom died in infancy.

Durr was a close friend of Rosa Parks and Eleanor Roosevelt, and was sister-in-law (through her sister's marriage) of Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, who sat on many crucial civil rights cases.

Her circle of friends extended to Alger Hiss.

Durr attended Wellesley College in Massachusetts from 1920 to 1923.

Durr has explicitly acknowledged Wellesley as the catalyst of her moral transformation from a racist to civil rights activist.

She came to question segregation after her experience with her college's dining hall.

The dining halls had a rotating tables policy that required students to eat meals with random students regardless of their race.

Durr, uncomfortable with this idea, protested this rule, but ended up dealing with it after the head of her house threatened to release her from the university if she didn't embrace the rotating tables policy.

See Virginia Durr Moment.

Durr was forced to withdraw from Wellesley College due to financial reasons in 1923 and returned home to Birmingham, Alabama.

After withdrawing from school in 1923, Virginia Durr returned home to Birmingham, Alabama where she met her future husband Clifford Durr at church.

Virginia Durr and Clifford Durr got married in April, 1926, and had five children.

Clifford married Virginia Foster Durr in hopes of her being a house wife and great social figure while he became a very successful and influential corporate lawyer.

While accepting the role of housewife, Virginia was bothered by the condition many workers and their families were in, which she had noticed while volunteering in social work for churches.

Virginia and Clifford Durr gave legal, financial, and moral support to civil rights activists.

In 1933 Durr moved with her husband to Washington, D.C. after Clifford was appointed legal counsel to the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and later Chief Legal Counsel to the Defense Plant Corporation.

Eventually it was where they became New Dealers.

It was in Washington where Virginia Durr's activism began.

She met important people through her husband's New Deal contacts, some of whom changed her conservative views on civil matters.

While her husband was working for the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, Durr joined the Woman's National Democratic Club.

In 1938, she was one of the founding members of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare (SCHW), an interracial group working to reduce segregation and improve living conditions in the South.

The group was formed in part as a response to Franklin Roosevelt's proclamation that the South was the leading economic problem in the nation.

By 1941, Durr became the vice president of the SCHW's civil rights subcommittee.

Working together with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, she lobbied for legislation to abolish the poll tax.

"Mrs. Durr ran for the U.S. Senate from Virginia on the Progressive ticket in 1948. At that time she said, "I believe in equal rights for all citizens and I believe the tax money that is now going for war and armaments and the militarization of our country could be better used to give everyone in the United States a secure standard of living."

Her opponents were Democrat Absalom Willis Robertson, Republican Robert H. Woods, Independent Howard Carwile and Socialist Clarke T. Robbe.

During the McCarthy era, a time where there was intense anti-communist suspicion in the United States where one made accusations of disloyalty without proper evidence, Durr was called to New Orleans to appear before Senator James Eastland's Internal Security Committee, where they investigated suspected Communists.

Because the Durrs did not openly condemn communism, anti-Communist activists often targeted them.

At the committee, Durr gave her name, assured them that she was not a Communist, and then refused to answer any further questions.

In 1951, Durr returned with her husband to Montgomery, Alabama, where she became acquainted with local civil rights activists like Rosa Parks, Aubrey Williams, E.D. Nixon, and Myles Horton.

Durr's activism started once she joined the local Council of Human Relations, Montgomery's only interracial political organization.

Durr supported the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) workers by housing and taking care of many volunteers who came to Montgomery to work on voter registration issues.

She worked jointly with liberal political leaders in order to gain the necessary support needed for legislation, which ultimately resulted in the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Durr later recalled her work with the SCHW as one of the happiest events of her life.

Quote from an obituary written by Patricia Sullivan:

She was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 2006.

Durr was born in Birmingham, Alabama, where she was raised by black women but was also taught that the Ku Klux Klan were protectors of southern womanhood.

One of her grandfathers had owned a plantation and slaves, while the other was a member of the Ku Klux Klan.