http://www.majorcox.com/columns/durr-1.htm

As staff of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare (SCHW), the Durrs helped organize a four day conference in Birmingham, Alabama. The year was 1938, and the conference was the first of its kind in the South -- "interracial and including all strata of society." In attendance were "all the groups working for the democratic and economic development of the South" (Brown, 2002, p.23). Blacks and whites were breaking the rules of segregation, and on the second day of the conference infamous police chief "Bull" Connor showed up to "enforce the city ordinance that banned racially mixed meetings. Black people would have to sit on one side of the central aisle and white people on the other" (Brown, 2002, p. 23). When Eleanor Roosevelt arrived soon after, she insisted on sitting on a folding chair exactly in between the two segregated groups (Brown, 2002).

From 1941-1948, Virginia Durr served as the vice chairman [sic] of the National Committee to Abolish the Poll Tax. Durr worked tirelessly to abolish the poll tax so that white women and black people in the South could vote. In the early 1950s, when the Durrs had moved to Montgomery, she continued to take principled stands against racism and segregation. For example, Virginia worked with a group called United Church Women who were, ironically, not united -- they had a black and a white group. Virginia, with a few others (including Coretta King), decided to break off and form an integrated group. They prayed in the mornings at Virginia's house and then later in black churches. The group grew in size "until a local retired admiral took down all the license numbers of cars parked outside a meeting and then published owners' names and phone numbers in the newspaper. The women received harassing phone calls at night and never met again" (Brown, 2002, p.40).

Another time Virginia stood up for her beliefs was in 1954 when she was issued a subpoena to appear before the Internal Security Subcommittee, a committee similar to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). The committee was having hearings to determine who were Communists. Virginia was shocked by the actions of the Committee. Here's how Studs Terkel, a great admirer, tells the rest of the story:

And there were a lot committees like this, there was one called the Internal Security Committee headed by Senator James Eastland. He was a 300-pound racist senator from Mississippi, in old Mississippi, and it's his committee and he wants to get some publicity too to find “unamercians.” [sic] So he chooses this group, of which of Virginia and her husband are members, the Southern Conference of Human Welfare. And they were fighting for civil liberties in the middle of all the hostility and racism in the South and they tripled the black votership in a couple of years. But of course they were booed, ostracized, the Durrs were, getting telephone calls and all. And now Virginia is called to the stand by Senator Eastland. And the picture of her is a simple one, her legs were crossed and she had taken out her compact and was powdering her nose. And Senator Eastland asked her, “Did you ever know? Name the names!” And she just looked right passed [sic] him, like he wasn't there. She ignored him, he was invisible. Just powdering her nose! And of course he's going crazy, 300 pounds of racism, virulence, and indignation and being ignored. He almost had an apoplectic fit. So they ordered her off the stand and later on the reporters come around and they're in awe of her, and they're laughing too of course. And they ask, “Mrs. Durr, what impelled you to ignore the Senator the way you did?” And she says, “Well, I think that man is just as common as pig tracks.” And they start laughing, and then she sighs, she was very colorful, and says, “Ah, I guess I'm just an old fashioned Southern snob" (Komp, 2004).

Virginia Durr received a call in 1955 from Myles Horton letting her know that he had a two week scholarship for a local leader to go to Highlander Folk School, where many movement leaders were trained. Durr immediately thought of, and referred, Rosa Parks (Brown, 2002, p.43). A few months later, Rosa Parks took her historic stand. During the Montgomery bus boycott, Virginia "picked up black people who needed a ride, even after the police began to give violation tickets to whites who did this" (Brown, 2002, p. 45).

Durr revealed in interviews at age 87 that "she did not experience herself as a lonely nonconformist, or even as a radical. She knew that racial integration and the right to vote, the two things she especially worked on, were commonplace in almost every other developed country in the world" (Colby & Damon in Brown, 2002, p. 48). Durr stated,

I did know what was right, and I felt that denying anybody the right to vote was wrong. I felt to segregate was wrong. I never had any doubts about it...When things get rough, if you don't believe in what you are doing, then you might as well give up. That's the one thing that keeps you going (Colby & Damon in Brown, 2002, p. 48-49).

References

Brown, Cynthia Stokes. (2002). Refusing Racism: White Allies and the Struggle for Civil Rights. New York: Teachers College Press.

Komp, Catherine. (March/April 2004). "Studs Terkel: Eternal Rebel." Clamor, 25, Retrieved April 15, 2004 from http://www.clamormagazine.org/issues/25/feature2.shtml