Tracing the erosion of white elite paternalism in Jim Crow Virginia, Douglas Smith reveals a surprising fluidity in southern racial politics in the decades between World War I and the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. Smith draws on official records, private correspondence, and letters to newspapers from otherwise anonymous Virginians to capture a wide and varied range of black and white voices. African Americans emerge as...

Scope and content: Oral history interview with Nashville Civil Rights Movement participant Adolpho A. Birch, Jr., conducted on 22 June 2005 by John Egerton as part of the Nashville Public Library's Civil Rights Oral History Project. During the ca. 1 hour interview, Birch discusses such topics as his family; his education in Washington, D.C.; growing up in segregated Washington, D.C.; his service in the Navy; coming to Nashville to practice law in...

Scope and content: An oral history interview with James H. Crowder, conducted on the 28 Aug. 1986 by Reavis Mitchell as part of the Homecoming '86 oral history project. Topics discussed during the interview include Crowder's business (Crowder Brothers Barber Shop) and its various locations over time; his family and childhood; attending school; learning to be a barber and working as a shoe shine boy; life in Nashville, including segregation; and...