
          Grace and guts
          
            
              Durr, VirginiaVirginia
               Durr
            
          
          Vol. 7, No. 5, 1985, pp. 17-21
          
          
            Steve Suitts:
          
          I have the privilege of introducing Virginia Durr, a remarkable
Alabamian whose life, spanning more than eight decades of Southern
history, chronicles the best aspirations of our region. In the great
movements which the South has witnessed, which it has endured, and
which it has triumphed in this century, Virginia Durr has been an
irreplaceable part. It started even as she was a child.
          At the age of six, in Birmingham, she went out to take a place in
the day's great crusade--for prohibition in Alabama. Virginia, the
daughter of one of Birmingham's most respected Presbyterian ministers
got ready to march. She was handed a sign that read: "Please save my
father from the demon rum."
          Even at six she knew that the daughter of a well-known minister
ought not make such a public declaration. For the first and perhaps
only time, she decided to forgo participation in a political
movement.
          Not too much later, when across the South working people began to
organize and the struggle of the times became one between labor and
capital, Virginia Durr took up with labor. When the Depression hit,
Virginia-vice-president of the Junior League of Birmingham--didn't see
just the small niceties of country club parties, she saw the hungry
bellies. She saw the children wearing flour sacks, and she began to
make a difference in the way she lived her life and in the way that
people had to endure their lives in the South.
          Ten years before the creation of the Southern Regional Council,
Virginia Durr became one of the young men and 

women who went to
Washington with the New Deal. When Franklin D. Roosevelt declared that
the South was the nation's "number one economic problem," Virginia
Durr already knew that. She was already working with a variety of
Southerners concerned with the problems of poverty.
          Virginia Durr was never, thank God, the soul of discretion. When,
after World War II, the nation began to tolerate the intolerance of
McCarthyism, when white liberals separated themselves from long-time
friends and stood silent when they were persecuted, Virginia Durr
stood up and shrieked in protest. When people were ostracized,
Virginia Durr would invite the accused to dinner and drinks. She
protested that people cannot be guilty by their associations.
          Twenty-five years before the creation of the Southern Regional
Council's Voting Rights Project, Virginia Durr knew that one of the
keys to a democratic South lay in the voting rights of blacks and poor
whites. She successfully led the anti-poll tax efforts throughout the
region and in the halls of Washington.
          Now for most people that would be a lifetime of accomplishment. But
Virignia Durr was only getting started. When she returned to Alabama
from Washington--because she would not hold her peace during the days
of McCarthyism--she continued to work and to live a life which
deserves all honor. When Rosa Parks decided she was not going to get
up on the bus, Virginia Durr was there supporting that effort as an
activist, as a friend, and as a white liberal.
          When the Civil Rights Movement began to grow, the Durr farm near
Montgomery was a center of activism, of retreat, and of planning for
the defense of the defenseless. Long days and nights were spent there
by many prominent leaders--and by many whom you never will know.
          During the development of the anti-poverty programs, and later, the
anti-war movement, the Durr farm continued to be a place where young
men and women could understand that there had been others who came
before them and that these would be others who would suppport them.
          With the advent of the feminist movement, Virginia Durr was
there. She said, "I've been doing that all my life." And she had. When
it comes to speaking her mind, Virginia makes a few exceptions about
being a Southern lady.
          And now, in this age in which not fear but indifference causes
inaction, Virginia Durr's continues to be the voice of
encouragement. She is a woman who combines grace and guts. Her
upbringing and even her voice reminds us of the accent of an
aristocrat, of Southern high culture. But her beliefs, her actions,
and her works are those of an egalitarian.
          It's hard for me to recall Virginia without also recalling Cliff
Durr. Their lives together showed how social commitment and personal
loyalty to another can be lovingly and effectively combined. When
Virginia faced Mississippi's Jim Eastland before the Senate witch hunt
committee that he conducted in the South to find the communists and
bolsheviks, she said, "My name is Virginia Durr. I'm the wife of Cliff
Durr." A woman whose accomplishments were her own, she recalled
herself in association with the person she most loved.
          For a long time Virginia said about her sister Josephine and her
brother-in-law Hugo Black that their lives were a marriage of justice
and mercy. Virginia should know. For she is one of the region's models
of both cherished qualities. Today we're privileged to have a
Southerner whose contributions to a democratic South have been a
mighty force in shaping the opportunties that exist in the region. But
just as important, Virginia Durr has given us the loveliest example of
how to conduct a life with a commitment of love for those around
us.
          
            Virginia Durr:
          
          I have to explain that a few of the remarks just made about me,
which were absolutely beautiful, were not true. The only reason I went
to a prohibition meeting when I was age six is that my uncle, Malcolm
Patterson, who was the governor of Tennessee, was running on a
prohibition ticket. I went to hear him speak and ask people for votes,
which he didn't get.
          I got interested in the labor movement in Birmingham because my
brother in-law, Hugo Black, was the lawyer for the unions. He used to
have terrific fights with Forney Johnson who represented the big
corporations. Because they didn't have any workman's compensation,
Hugo would win big awards from juries. So I'd go to the courts
sometimes to hear him argue.
          I was delighted to hear that my father was a distinguished
Presbyterian preacher with the South Highland Church in
Birmingham. But my father actually was thrown out of the
church. There's a reason if you want to hear it.
          My grandfather, who lived in Union Springs, Alabama, was quite well
off. He thought the Civil War was the stupidest thing in the wide
world and the "fire-eaters" as he called them, William L. Yancey and
all, he couldn't stand. So he sent his cotton to Liverpool and told
the merchants there to save his money until after the War. Nearly
everybody else in Alabama had nothing but Confederate money--which
wasn't worth starting a fire with--but he had gold.
          I was brought up to be very much ashamed of him because he wasn't a
Confederate. My other grandfather had fought with General Nathan
Bedford Forrest and was in the last battle at Selma; he was the hero
of the family--this great dashing Confederate Colonel. But my
grandfather in 

Indian Springs was not mentioned very much except that
he was rich--"thank God."
          My father had the opportunity of a very good education. He went to
Southwestern, then to Hampden-Sydney, then Princeton, and on to
Edinburgh in Scotland. He travelled to Berlin and Heidelberg. He went
to the Holy Land. When he came back from his long tour he had some
slight doubts in his mind as to whether every word in the Bible was
literally true and dictated by God. He wrestled with it for a long
time but he never said much about it.
          In fact, I used to go to church, Sunday School, evening service on
Sundays, prayer meeting on Thursday night. We'd have morning prayers
every morning and I'd sit there praying for food.
          In those days, preachers sent you to hell at every meeting, and
hell wasn't just somewhere down yonder, it was right under the
floor. So I grew up in absolute terror of hell.
          My father preached hell fire and damnation but he did have his
doubts. One day the session of the Presbysterian Church came to him
and said they'd suspected he wasn't really very orthodox, in fact they
thought he was heretical. They told him he had to swear that he
absolutely believed that the whale swallowed Jonah and then spat him
up alive three days later just as happy and healthy as he ever
was. They said they'd give him a week to decide.
          My poor father came home and walked up and down for a week. We took
him coffee. My mother cried. I was only seven or eight, and I
cried. My brother and my sister cried.
          He was in a terrible fix for a man in his forties. He had a wife
and three children, and while his mother had that plantation down in
Union Springs, you know it wasn't as good as it used to be in the old
slavery days.
          At the end of the week he came back and said he didn't believe
it. They threw him out of the whole Southern Presbyterian Church and
declared him to be a heretic. And I swear to God that it was easier to
be raised in Birmingham as a communist than as a heretic.
          My father had to go into business, and of course he wasn't trained
to go into business. And, I hate to tell this, but my father had been
raised in the days just after slavery and he really thought every
black person had been born to wait on him. So to be poor and
struggling too, and he went into an insurance business where he sold
insurance to black people.
          Steve Suitts said in his introduction how aristocratic I was, well,
I can assure you the poorer we got the more aristocratic we became.
          But you see my trouble has been--and the reason that I have caused
so many rifts--is because I cannot differentiate between politics and
people. If I get into a movement, then I like the people or I don't
like them. So when I got into the civil rights movement, I liked the
people in the movement. I really adored Mrs. Mary McLeod Bethune. I
felt like they were fighting for me. I was fighting, but they were
fighting for me.
          Because to be a sweet Southern girl in the South during the days
that I grew up you were just like you were a prisoner. You couldn't do
anything. You couldn't even kiss the boys without feeling guilty. The
great ambition of a Southern girl's life was to marry well.
          I got into voting rights and civil rights almost by chance. I got
to Washington during the New Deal. My husband was working in the
Reconstruction Finanace Corporation. I was free to go into town and
take part in the women's division of the Democratic National
Committee. I was urged to do that by my brother-in-law, Hugo
Black. Hugo really believed that women's place was in the home; he
certainly believed that his wife's place was in the home. But he
encouraged me--I never knew why, but he did.
          So I went in and got thrown immediately into the fight to get rid
of the poll tax. I won't go all into that, but we did get rid of
it. Now everybody can vote. And, in Alabama, guess who they vote for?
Year after year after year? George Wallace. They voted for him over
and over and over and they'll probably vote for him this time if he's
breathing.

          Then came the question of the segregation and one heroine of that
era in the South was Rosa Parks. My husband went down and got her out
of jail.
          When you talk about heroines, you take a woman who makes
twenty-three dollars a week in Montgomery, who has a sick husband,
sick mother--she has to support these two people herself. Living in a
public housing project. And she's a very well-educated woman.
          As you know, there were a number of Yankee women who came South
after the Civil War and started missionary schools for black
women. The school that Rosa Parks attended there in Montgomery was
called Mrs. White's School. These Yankee school teachers taught these
black women reading, writing and arithmetic--but also to be
citizens.
          Rosa Parks claimed the right of being a citizen of the United
States. She sat there on that bus and was arrested and taken to
jail. But it was a beginning of the end of segregation.
          What we have to tackle now is poverty--no jobs, no money, nothing
for people to do. And infant mortality. Let me give you an example.
          Is anybody here a Baptist? Well don't get your feelings hurt when I
talk about the Baptists and what happened in Montgomery, Alabama.
          The Baptist Hospital in Montgomery, Alabama is the biggest hospital
in the city. It has a fine neo-natal care center and doctors who make
lot of money. It has a beautiful statue out front: Jesus holding out
his arms, saying, "Suffer all little children to come unto me." So
poor, pregnant women--many of them teenagers--began to bring the
little children unto them. They brought them from hither and yon, from
all over South Alabama.
          What did the hospital do? They closed the beds. Those big white
bellied Baptists closed those beds and said, "If they can't pay,
they've just got to die." And they didn't even take the statue of
Jesus down.
          Well, my son-in-law got real mad. He's a very nice guy, although he
is a Yankee, he's not as much a Yankee as he used to be. He led
several marches and helped get back some of the beds, not all of them
by any means. NQW this is a rich hospital with a rich bunch of
trustees and what they're doing is killing these children.
          Now people tell me, "You can't go back to the New Deal. The New
Deal is over. It's a new time."
          Well it may be a new time, but hell, the New Deal took people who
were without jobs--black and white--and put them to work. They had WPA
and CCC and NYA and PWA.
          And I think the government ought to give people jobs now. And if it
takes public ownership of the means of production--now that's a
serious phrase, that'll get you in jail every time if you say it at
the wrong place. But I believe that to let people be idle and let the
country go to hell while we put all our money into Star Wars is
insane.
          I believe all the nice things I've heard this morning about what to
do about food stamps, or about public housing, or 

about learning a new
skill. But what the hell use is it to learn a new skill when you can't
get a job?
          We've got to do something. Fiddling around isn't going to do any
good. I don't think we can just make it a little better here and a
little better there. We've got to do something more drastic.
          Now you all in Georgia have the lousiest bunch of
congressmen--except for Wyche Fowler--that I have ever known. We have
an even worse bunch of congressmen in Alabama. We have a crazy man, a
senator named Denton. I mean he's not just crazy in a polite sense of
the word, he's crazy in the medical sense of the word.
          And, of course, you cannot run for office in Montgomery, Alabama,
or anywhere unless you get on a television. And the people who get on
the television the most seem to get elected the most. In Montgomery
we've got Bill Dickinson, probably the worst congressman in the United
States. He's on the television every fifteen minutes because he's paid
for by the war contractors. He is the head of an armed services
committee.
          So, are we going to be run by this bunch of bastards or not? I mean
this is what we get down to. They're corrupt. They're stupid. They're
absolutely lacking in any compassion. And Reagan is the worst.
          Are we going to sit here and go to hell with the atomic bomb and
become specks of dust or are we going to get busy and get mad and do
something?
          I mean Meese, Reagan--they're just such terrible people, they're
not even real. They're just reflections of tv or movies. We've got to
get busy because the people who are now running the country seem
determined to destroy us. We've got to get together and stand up for
ourselves or we're all going to be dead.
          
            During the forty-first anniversary meeting of the
Southern Regional Council, held in Atlanta in early November, civil
rights advocate Virginia Durr spoke at a luncheon held in honor of the
publication of her autobiographical recollections. (Virginia Durr's
book, Outside the Magic Circle, edited by Hollinger Rarnard of
Birmingham, is available from the University of Alabama Press.) Below,
Southern Changes presents excerpts from Virginia's luncheon talk, as
well as the introductory comments of SRC executive director Steve
Suitts. Steve Suitts.
          
        