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V
irginia
C
apitol
C
onnections
, W
inter
2017
7
Crusade of Voters was born from these
meetings. Its dual purpose is stated below:
To increase the voting strength of the
population of the City of Richmond and
to improve the moral, social, economic,
educational, and general welfare.
To establishVOTER REGISTRATION
and VOTER EDUCATION in the City of Richmond and issue
such policy statement or institute such programs that will
improve the economic, educational, general welfare and
solidarity of the people.
“We realized that even though you might have the laws on your
side, if you don’t have the judges and the elected officials willing to
follow the law, you haven’t won the battle, and the battle is down in
the trenches, and you have to elect people that
are going to represent you and are going to obey
the law,” Reid said in the same 2003 interview.
Over the next twelve years, Reid would
continue working to strategically increase the
voter base. Progress was made after the Voter
Rights Act of 1965. The Crusade partnered
with moderate whites, registering many voters.
But while blacks were being elected to the city
council, none had been elected to the General
Assembly.
“As the black vote increased and became
more effective getting persons elected to city
council and elected to Richmond,” said Reid.
“The General Assembly gerrymandered to
make it eight delegates from Richmond and
Henrico and that was almost the size of a
Congressional district. This was the problem
of gerrymandering. They diluted the black vote
so we would never get someone elected to the
General Assembly.”
Reid has a strategic mind, and a continual focus on identifying
the cause of the problem, as well as the solution. Because of this,
the Crusade bargained by saying they would support the Democratic
slate of eight if one of the legislators was African American. The plan
appeared to work, until the chosen candidate dropped out of the race.
“Because I had been involved in setting up the deal, I got caught
up in running,” said Reid. “I had no intention in running. When he
dropped out, they told me ‘you’re going to have to run yourself.’”
Reid lost that election in 1965, but was elected in 1967. This
made history as he was the first Black American elected to the
Virginia General Assembly since Reconstruction.
“Well, you always had everybody watching you,” Reid said. “To
see how you’d react to everything. You had to be very thoughtful with
statements that you made. Your activities and how you treat others.
But there was no hostility. None openly. There may have been some
that I was not aware of. Certainly there were things that happened that
I did not know about.”
At the time, Bernie Henderson was a seventeen year old white
youth, working as a legislative aide for three Delegates.
“In the 1965 campaign, I was a fourteen year old political activist
volunteering in Fergie’s campaign. I was drawn to him because at
the time everything in Virginia politics seemed to be race based and
I thought it was past high time for the African-American community
to be represented in the General Assembly and Fergie was uniquely
qualified for that office.”
When asked about moments of discrimination that Reid
experienced during this period of his life, Reid only recounts one
Dr. William Ferguson “Fergie” Reid is characterized by his hope.
Not an apathetic or ambiguous hope, but an active hope; a hope
marked by a historic election into the Virginia General Assembly, his
co-founding of the Richmond Crusade of Voters, and his continuing
work to establish a strong voter base in his state.
“Well, you don’t give up,” Reid explained, followed by a chuckle.
“You try to make the changes and you try to do it within the system.
We knew that voting was the answer and because we were denied the
right to vote, we would have to register as many blacks as we possibly
could in order to beat the system. We thought the ballot was more
effective than bullets. We had to beat the system within the system.
The voter registration was the only way out. And fortunately with the
Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, we got them.”
The disparities in education and at work that Reid faced as
an African American man heightened his
awareness to injustices and other problems in
society.
“The schools were separate but not equal,”
Reid explained. “The white schools had better
facilities than we did. We never got new books.
We always got hand me downs, and they’d
been used by previous students. They had that
sticker in the front of the book with the names
of previous owners. The white schools had
swimming pools. The high schools had tennis
courts and other athletic facilities which the
black schools did not have. There were no black
principals. We did not have school busses.”
While the teachers were excellent, the
students recognized the inequity.
“Well, we resented it,” Reid answers.
“Particularly when we would get school books
that previous owners had been white and these
were hand me downs. These had no recent
history. That was a handicap. We resented it.
Tried to hope there would be a better day.”
After finishing high school, Reid studied biology at Virginia
Union University and decided on a career in medicine. He attended
Howard University, a prominent HBCU [historically black college
or university] instead of the Medical College of Virginia, which
was within walking distance of his home, because the college did
not accept African-American students. Later he was an intern at the
Homer G. Phillips Hospital in St. Louis because it was one of the few
hospitals black Americans were able to train in.
“After that, I did a couple of years in the military,” Reid said, in a
2003 interview published by VCU libraries. “One year in Korea with
the 1st Marine Division and another year at the United States Naval
Hospital at Bethesda.”
While in Korea, Reid heard the news of the Brown v. Board
decision. In that moment, he felt that his hope was being fulfilled.
But when he returned from the Navy, Reid saw that integration was
not as simple as a court ruling.
“When I came back from the Navy, the big battle was Save Our
Schools,” Reid explained. “People were fighting to close the schools
rather than integrate them.”
The Committee to Save Our Schools, was a group of local
Richmond citizens, fighting against a referendum that would defy
the Brown v. Board decision. The black voter turnout in Richmond
against the referendum was disappointing, with less than half of
registered black voters casting a vote at the polls. Reid knew that poor
voter turnout on an issue that affected black voters revealed a deeper
issue. In response, he began meeting with Dr. William S. Thornton
and John M. Brooks to strategize possible solutions. The Richmond
Dr. William “Fergie” Reid:
A Resilient Force in Virginia Civil Rights
By Lydia Freeman
See
"Fergie"
, continued on page 8
FERGIE