Reconstructing Danville

With Good Reason

In 1883 a young African American worker was alleged to have brushed shoulders with a white woman as they passed each other on a narrow sidewalk in Danville, Virginia. A race riot erupted and Jane Dailey (University of Chicago) says the white supremacist backlash that followed led to the disenfranchisement of Black Virginians for nearly 100 years. And: Jeff McClurken (University of Mary Washington) discusses the life of a Danville industrialist and former Confederate soldier, William T. Sutherlin, who led a skewed Congressional investigation into the 1883 riot. Later in the show: Danville was like many small southern towns and cities after the civil war. Caitlin Verboon (Virginia Tech) studies how white and black citizens viewed each other and interacted in the post-war years. Plus: Tom Costa (University of Virginia at Wise) connects the dots between the Danville riots and the codification of Jim Crow laws in Virginia’s Constitution of 1902.