Film, Video Freedom Writer: Virginia Foster Durr, Letters from the Civil Rights Years

About this Item

Title
Freedom Writer: Virginia Foster Durr, Letters from the Civil Rights Years
Summary
Patricia Sullivan discussed her book "Freedom Writer: Virginia Foster Durr, Letters from The Civil Rights Years" in a program sponsored by the Library's John W. Kluge Center. As a privileged white Southern woman, Durr (1903-1999) was an unlikely yet monumental champion of civil rights. "Freedom Writer" is a collection of her letters during three decades of struggle for racial equality. In 1951, returning to her native Alabama after a 21-year absence, she was deeply affronted by the same unchecked racism she recalled from her childhood. To help understand the South and battle her sense of isolation, Durr wrote hundreds of letters--humorous, sharp and observant--to her friends outside the region, among them Eleanor Roosevelt, Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson, Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, journalist Jessica Mitford and historian C. Vann Woodward.
Event Date
March 30, 2006
Notes
-  Patricia Sullivan, compiler and editor of the book originally published on the 100th anniversary of Virginia Foster Durr's birth and now available in paperback, is a John W. Kluge fellow at the Library of Congress and an associate professor of history and African-American studies at the University of South Carolina. She is the author of "Days of Hope: Race and Democracy in The New Deal Era" and is currently writing a history of the NAACP.
Related Resources
The John W. Kluge Center: http://www.loc.gov/loc/kluge/
Running Time
42 minutes, 7 seconds
Language
English
Online Format
video

Rights & Access

While the Library of Congress created most of the videos in this collection, they include copyrighted materials that the Library has permission from rightsholders to present.  Rights assessment is your responsibility.  The written permission of the copyright owners in materials not in the public domain is required for distribution, reproduction, or other use of protected items beyond that allowed by fair use or other statutory exemptions. There may also be content that is protected under the copyright or neighboring-rights laws of other nations.  Permissions may additionally be required from holders of other rights (such as publicity and/or privacy rights). Whenever possible, we provide information that we have about copyright owners and related matters in the catalog records, finding aids and other texts that accompany collections. However, the information we have may not be accurate or complete.

More about Copyright and other Restrictions

For guidance about compiling full citations consult Citing Primary Sources.

Credit Line: Library of Congress

Cite This Item

Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.

Chicago citation style:

Freedom Writer: Virginia Foster Durr, Letters from the Civil Rights Years. 2006. Video. https://www.loc.gov/item/webcast-3856/.

APA citation style:

(2006) Freedom Writer: Virginia Foster Durr, Letters from the Civil Rights Years. [Video] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/webcast-3856/.

MLA citation style:

Freedom Writer: Virginia Foster Durr, Letters from the Civil Rights Years. 2006. Video. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/webcast-3856/>.

More Films, Videos like this