This Week in Virginia History

This week in 1969... Hurricane Camille was a category 5 storm when it slammed into the Gulf Coast. Days later, it stalled over Nelson County. Rain fell in buckets for hours, and peaceful mountain creeks quickly became torrents of floods, mud, and rock. Half a century later, it remains the worst natural disaster in Virginia history.

This week in 1900... If you live in Charlottesville, you've probably heard his name... Venable Elementary School and the Venable neighborhood. The man was Charles Scott Venable. And when he died, he was so revered among white Virginians that his obituary was published on the front page of both the Charlottesville Daily Progress and the Richmond Times-Dispatch. That's because he played a key role in constructing the Lost Cause Myth in the years after the Civil War.

This week in 1923… The Virginia Bureau of Vital Statistics opened in 1912, and the man hired to lead this new department was Walter Plecker. Following the passage of Virginia's Racial Integrity Act, Plecker threw himself into enforcing a racialized society, declaring that his office has the greatest power in the state to combat race-mixing.

In 1963, Prince Edward County was the only place in the country without public education. Instead of desegregating their schools, they closed them. For years. Most white students went to private schools, but almost 2,000 black students had no formal education at all.

Then, the students protested on the streets of Farmville.

This week in 1656... Slavery started in the Virginia Colony in 1619. Over the next decades, the question of WHO exactly was considered a slave was in flux. Was slavery determined by social status? Religion? Or by race?

Enter Elizabeth Key, the first enslaved woman in the colonies to sue for her freedom.

The morning train chugged down Afton Mountain. On board was a prisoner named John Henry James. He would not make it to his trial in Charlottesville.

Back in 1929, the town of Covington, Virginia warmly welcomed their new rayon plant. The factory became an essential part of Covington’s economy and employed more than a thousand people. But during the next decade, workers tired of the increased workload and the low pay of just $25 a week.

Workers formed a union and tried to settle the disagreements. But when negotiations fell apart, the union voted to strike.

James Madison slowly sat up in bed. He felt very weak that morning. The sun had just risen, and soon the enslaved maid Sukey would bring him his breakfast from the basement kitchen.

But it irritated him that he couldn’t eat it at the dining table. The eighty-five year old “Father of the Constitution” had been confined to his bed for six months. Rheumatism and liver dysfunction crippled him.

Madison still had animated conversations with his family and visitors. But he knew he wouldn’t last much longer. And he was the last of the Founding Fathers.

War between England and France was in full swing. The United States tried to stay neutral, but the British made that task difficult.

The British ship HMS Leopard intercepted the USS Chesapeake off the coast of Norfolk. The British commander requested to search the Chesapeake for British deserters, which the American captain refused. A few minutes later, the HMS Leopard opened fire.

Fields Cook led the delegation of African American men up the White House stairs. He and four other men had come to Washington to deliver a list of grievances to President Andrew Johnson. The Civil War was over. The enslaved freed. But freedmen were at the mercy of their former enslavers, and no Virginia laws addressed the newly freed African Americans.