The Richmond Crusade for Voters: a book talk and signing by author Kimberly Matthews

Portrait of Kimberly Matthews, a black woman with glasses and short curly hair. She's smiling next to her book, The Richmond Crusade of Voters

When

March 21, 2018 from 4:00 PM to 5:30 PM

Where

James Branch Cabell Library, Room 250
901 Park Ave., Richmond, Va. 23284

Description

Kimberly Matthews, Ph.D., presents her book, The Richmond Crusade for Voters (Arcadia Press, 2017). The book details a comprehensive history of the Richmond Crusade for Voters, an activist group created to fight voter suppression. A book-signing will follow the talk.
The event is free and open to all. Parking is available for a fee in the West Broad Street, West Main Street and West Cary Street parking decks. For special accommodations, or to register offline, please call the VCU Libraries Events Office at (804) 828-0593.

About the Author

Kimberly Matthews, Ph.D., serves as a professor in VCU LEAD, a living-learning program at Virginia Commonwealth University for undergraduate students interested in leading professional and civic organizations. She is also active in the Richmond Crusade for Voters, a voter education and registration organization founded in 1956 in response to efforts to suppress minority voter turnout. During a stint as editor-in-chief of the organization’s newsletter, Matthews loved to delve into the group’s history and shine a light on overlooked figures who had fought for voting rights.

About the Book

The Richmond Crusade for Voters, founded in 1956 to directly oppose Massive Resistance and the Stanley Plan, has served the city of Richmond for 60 years. Despite efforts to suppress minority voter turnout, the Richmond Crusade for Voters thrived at motivating voters to participate in local, state and national elections. The organization was skilled at mobilizing African American voters, and its purpose, then and now, is to increase the voting strength of the citizens of Richmond. The Richmond Crusade for Voters provides a pictorial history of one of the nation's most influential voter education and voter registration organizations through vintage and contemporary images.
Read more about Matthews' research for her book.
Image: Portrait of Kimberly Matthews, courtesy of VCUNews, The Richmond Crusade for Voters book cover, courtesy of Arcadia Press.

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Contributors:

Ray Bonis:

Ray worked at VCU Libraries' James Branch Cabell Library from 1989 until 2021. He is the co-author of Virginia Commonwealth University (2006) and Greetings from Richmond (2009) - an architectural history of the city.

Selden Richardson:

Architectural historian and author of Built By Blacks: African American Architecture and Neighborhoods in Richmond, Virginia (2006), The Tri-State Gang in Richmond: Murder and Robbery in the Great Depression. (2012), and Richmond Murder & Mayhem (2023)

On History:

"The dead were and are not. Their place knows them no more and is ours today...The poetry of history lies in the quasi-miraculous fact that once, on this earth, once, on this familiar spot of ground, walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passions, but now all gone, one generation vanishing into another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone, like ghosts at cockcrow."
-- G. M. Trevelyan (1876-1962) from his "Autobiography of an Historian," An Autobiography and Other Essays (1949).

Key Dates in Richmond History
(more to follow)

1737 – William Mayo laid out the original street plan for the town of Richmond on land provided by William Byrd II.

1742 – Chartered as a town

1780 – Virginia’s state capital moved from Williamsburg to Richmond.

1782 – Incorporated as a city.

1788 - Virginia State Capitol building completed.

1860-1865 – Serves as capital of the Confederate States of America.

1910 - Manchester, the city located just south of the James, is consolidated with Richmond.

1949 - Oliver Hill (1907-2007) elected to City Council, first African American since Reconstruction.

1968 - Virginia Commonwealth University created by the merger of the Medical College of Virginia and Richmond Professional Institute.

1977 - Henry Marsh elected as first African American mayor of Richmond.

2009 – Shockoe Examiner founded.