ABSTRACT
The end of segregation and the arrival of federal registrars to oversee enforcement of the Voting Rights Act were, for Virginia, “the fulfillment of a dream” that began with the founding of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare nearly 30 years earlier. Yet as Jim Crow laws fell, the way in which race defined attitudes and structured opportunity became more apparent. Many white Southerners were unmoved and unchanged by the civil rights movement; George Wallace stood as a stark reminder of that. When Martin Luther King, Jr. turned his attention to housing discrimination and black poverty in the urban North, liberal support for the civil rights leader faded. “Law and order” became the dominant refrain, ignoring the harsh realities of urban life, as black rage and frustration exploded into violence in cities across the nation.
