Freedom Writer: Virginia Foster Durr, Letters from the Civil Rights Years | National Humanities Center

Work of the Fellows: Edited Volumes

Freedom Writer: Virginia Foster Durr, Letters from the Civil Rights Years

Edited by Patricia Sullivan (NHC Fellow, 2001–02)

Activists; American Civil Rights Movement; Activism; Primary Sources; Correspondence; Virginia Foster Durr

New York: Routledge, 2003

From the publisher’s description:

Virginia Foster Durr was a monumental champion for civil rights. A white southerner who returned to Alabama in 1951 after twenty years in Washington, she was horrified to revisit the racism of her childhood. She wrote hundreds of letters - humorous, sharp and observant - to her friends up north, among them Eleanor Roosevelt, Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson, Hugo Black and C. Vann Woodward.
Published on the 100th anniversary of Durr's birth, her letters offer a distinctive glimpse into the day-to-day battles for racial justice at a pivotal moment in American history.

Subjects
History / Activists / American Civil Rights Movement / Activism / Primary Sources / Correspondence / Virginia Foster Durr /

Sullivan, Patricia (NHC Fellow, 2001–02), ed. Freedom Writer: Virginia Foster Durr, Letters from the Civil Rights Years. New York: Routledge, 2003.