Political Notebook: Race and politics in Va. history

By Bob Gibson

Published: March 29, 2008

Race relations in Virginia are seldom far from politics, yet often are not part of daily conversation.

In polite society of my parents’ generation, religion and politics were topics best left out of dinner conversation.

Today, we sup on religious differences and have political scandal for dessert, but race is a trickier topic.

The intersection of race and politics is discussed in a pair of new books on Virginia history.

“Opportunity Time, a Memoir by Gov. Linwood Holton” tackles the difficulties he and others encountered trying to win statewide office in the 1960s South for those like him who opposed segregation.

To his great credit, Holton rejected his Republican Party’s “Southern Strategy,” built in that decade on a pursuit of white votes, with words and politicians appealing to old racial prejudices.

Holton chose a higher road and an appeal to the desire of many Virginians to improve public schools without separating races in a futile fight against the federal courts.

His book, published this year by the University of Virginia Press, discusses the rise of Republicans willing to challenge segregationist Democrats by appealing to the notion of keeping schools open and going after black votes, moderates and others turned off by Virginia’s nasty flirtation with “Massive Resistance” to integration.

A colorful recounting of campaign events and strategies includes Holton’s recollections of encounters with “our share of crazies and extremists during the campaign” he lost for governor in 1965, before winning the office in 1969.

Even in the relatively affluent enclaves of Northern Virginia, politics was both physical and visceral.

“Once in the T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, our meeting was invaded by a white supremacy group wearing Nazi uniforms,” he wrote.

“When one of them attempted to jump up onto the stage, former marine Vince Callahan caught him in midjump and pushed him backward,” Holton recounted. “His head hit the linoleum floor with a thump so loud you could have heard it in Big Stone Gap. I was sure he’d be dead, but he shook himself, got up and staggered out. We heard no more from the Nazis.”

When Holton and his team weren’t thumping Nazis, they were courting national Republicans such as former President Eisenhower, who campaigned with him in Richmond, and former Vice President Nixon, who spoke in Lexington and returned as president to Roanoke during Holton’s successful 1969 effort. Ronald Reagan campaigned with Holton in 1969 as well.

The book discloses details of Holton’s estrangement from some of the GOP conservatives who jumped on the “Southern Strategy” and courted “notorious segregationists.”

That group and the strategy, while leading to some near-term victories, “would also doom the Republican Party to minority status in the long run,” Holton believes.

“Results of midterm elections in 2006 furnished more evidence of increasing isolation and minority status for a southern Republican Party,” he wrote.

Holton wrote that he passionately urged Nixon to “abandon the divisiveness of the Southern Strategy. But Richard Nixon didn’t get it” and was incapable of adopting a better strategy of reaching out to others, including former opponents, Holton concluded.

He said Nixon had an inferiority complex that tragically deepened after he was elected president.

The second new book that tackles race and politics in Virginia is “Old Dominion, New Commonwealth, a His-tory of Virginia 1607-2007.”

Its primary author, Ronald Heinemann, is professor emeritus of history at Hampden-Sydney College. The book also is published by the University of Virginia Press.

Heinemann and Holton are scheduled to appear at a Virginia Festival of the Book panel this afternoon at 1:30 in Charlottesville City Hall. I am fortunate to have been chosen as moderator of their panel, which is free and open to the public.

Heinemann’s history includes a chapter, “The Politics of Race, 1945-1960,” that discusses the late Harry F. Byrd’s ability to appoint governors of Virginia “subject to confirmation by the electorate.”

Holton helped break that mold, which was a bit of a yoke on black Virginians.

Byrd feared that civil-rights proposals would encourage black political activity that could threaten his organization, so Byrd had battled against President Truman to the point of trying to keep him off a Virginia presidential ballot, the Heinemann book recounts.

The book recounts how conservatives seized control of the Republican Party under Holton during his governorship and discusses how national events such as the war in Vietnam polarized the political realignment taking place in Virginia under Holton.

Anyone interested in the intersection of politics and race in Virginia is welcome to attend this afternoon’s book festival forum.

Heinemann and Holton said they are more than ready to discuss the topic and to respond to questions from a Charlottesville audience that certainly is aware of a racial past that Virginia has struggled to overcome.