Staunton Vindicator-Coalition Rule in Danville

Staunton Vindicator-Coalition Rule in Danville

African Americans, politics, race relations, violence

Early in the 1880s African Americans held public offices in the city of Danville. During this time, a biracial coalition known as the Readjuster Party had won control of the General Assembly and the statewide offices. A circular letter published with the Staunton Vindicator before the 1883 general election voiced the racial attitudes common among white Virginians at the time and fueled resentment at what many of them regarded, inaccurately and unfairly, as African American domination of Virginia's society and government. Danville's white residents appealed to people elsewhere in Virginia to vote for Democrats in order to defeat the Readjusters and end what they described as the "misrule of the radical or negro party."

Special supplement to the Staunton Vindicator, Broadside 1882 S89 FF, Library of Virginia, Prints and Photographs Division

ca. 1883

Library of Virginia

CC BY-SA

JPG

Broadside

10_0926_001_(1882.S89_FF)

Danville, Virginia