Reconstructing Danville

With Good Reason · May 17, 2019 · 51m

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…