Portal:Virginia

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Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The state's capital is Richmond and its most populous city is Virginia Beach, though its most populous subdivision is Fairfax County, part of Northern Virginia, where slightly over a third of Virginia's population of 8.72 million live .

The Blue Ridge Mountains cross the western and southwestern parts of the state. The state's central region lies predominantly in the Piedmont. Eastern Virginia is part of the Atlantic Plain, and the Middle Peninsula forms the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. The fertile Shenandoah Valley fosters the state's most productive agricultural counties, while the economy in Northern Virginia is driven by technology companies and U.S. federal government agencies, including the U.S. Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency. Hampton Roads is also the site of the region's main seaport and Naval Station Norfolk, the world's largest naval base. (Full article...)

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The Stanley plan was a package of 13 statutes adopted in September 1956 by the U.S. state of Virginia designed to ensure racial segregation in that state's public schools despite the ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). The legislative program was named for Governor Thomas B. Stanley, who proposed the program and successfully pushed for its enactment. The Stanley plan was a critical element in the policy of "massive resistance" to the Brown ruling advocated by U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr. (pictured). The plan also included measures designed to curb the Virginia state chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which many Virginia segregationists believed was responsible for "stirring up" litigation to integrate the public schools.

The plan was enacted by the Virginia Assembly on September 22, 1956, and signed into law by Governor Stanley on September 29. A federal court struck down a portion of the Stanley plan as unconstitutional in January 1957. By 1960, nearly all of the major elements of the plan (including the litigation curbs aimed at the NAACP) had been struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court and other federal and state courts. The constitutional invalidity of the Stanley plan led new governor of Virginia, James Lindsay Almond, Jr., to propose "passive resistance" to school integration in 1959. The Supreme Court declared portions of "passive resistance" unconstitutional in 1964 and again in 1968.

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John Tyler (1790 – 1862) was the tenth President of the United States (1841–1845). Born to an aristocratic Virginia family, Tyler served as a Virginia state legislator and governor. He came to national prominence at a time of political upheaval, serving as a U.S. representative, and U.S. senator before being elected Vice President in 1840. Upon the death of President William Henry Harrison only a month after his inauguration, a short Constitutional crisis arose over the succession process. Tyler was the first to succeed to the office of President on the death of the incumbent, in this case William Henry Harrison.

Tyler's opposition to federalism and emphatic support of states' rights endeared him to his fellow Virginians but alienated him from most of the political allies that brought him to power in Washington. Though he had several foreign policy achievements, his presidency was crippled by opposition from both parties. Near the end of his life he would side with the South in its secession from the United States. Although some have praised Tyler's political resolve, his presidency is generally held in low esteem by historians; today he is considered an obscure president, with little presence in the American cultural memory.

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This month in Virginia history

May 2, 1863: During the Battle of Chancellorsville, General Stonewall Jackson is shot behind his own lines, and dies several days later.
May 5–7, 1864: The Battle of the Wilderness is the first engagement between Generals Grant and Lee.
May 14, 1607: Jamestown is founded on an island in the James River, upstream of the Chesapeake Bay. (Historic Jamestowne, pictured)
May 15, 1776: Virginia declares itself independent of the British Empire, prior to the general Declaration of Independence made later that year
May 23, 1610: The Third Supply arrives in Jamestown with desperately-needed provisions and new colonists, enabling continued survival of the colony

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Credit: NASA

Turning vanes inside one of the wind tunnels at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia

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... that a Virginia TV station had to take out title loans to pay its staff?
... that land for a library built for African Americans in Virginia was donated by Pope Pius XII?
... that professor Ruth Ann Davis made the largest-ever single contribution to Potomac State College of West Virginia University to support nursing scholarships in memory of her mother?
... that William H. Davis was the first teacher of Booker T. Washington and the first African American to be nominated as a candidate for West Virginia governor in 1888?
... that Joseph Ranger was the longest-serving Black sailor in the American Revolutionary War's Virginia State Navy?
... that Daniel Barclay Williams, Virginia's first Black teacher of classics, was described as "a one man department"?