Virginia, state, United States: Desegregation and Growth

After the 1954 Supreme Court decision on public school integration, attempts at desegregating Virginia's schools proceeded slowly. After Virginia courts and federal courts ruled illegal the order by Gov. J. Lindsay Almond, Jr., to close public schools in nine counties, a lame compromise of “local option” was adopted. With the exception of Prince Edward County, where schools remained closed from 1959 until 1964, all parts of Virginia had accepted at least token integration by the mid-1960s. In 1989, L. Douglas Wilder, a Democrat, became the first African American elected governor in Virginia.

Mark R. Warner, a Democrat, was elected in 2001; his lieutenant governor, Democrat Timothy M. Kaine, was elected governor in 2005. Both Warner and Kaine would be elected to the U.S. Senate. Republicans regained the governorship after Robert F. McDonnell was elected in 2009, but Democrat Terry McAuliffe won in 2013, and McAuliffe's lieutenant governor, Democrat Ralph Northam, won in 2017. Northam faced a scandal when an earlier photo of the young governor wearing blackface at a college event surfaced, but he successfully resisted calls on him to resign. After eight years of Democratic reign, Republican Glenn Youngkin handily defeated McAuliffe who was running for a new term in 2021.

Virginia has benefited in recent decades from increased federal spending. In the 1980s the Hampton Roads area saw a naval shipbuilding boom. The greatest growth, however, has come in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., where expanded federal offices and hundreds of quasi-official and private organizations engaged in lobbying, communications, and other businesses that owe their existence to proximity to the seat of the government have in turn spawned trade and service hubs like Dale City and Tysons Corner.

Sections in this article:

• Introduction
• Desegregation and Growth
• Politics and Industry in the Early Twentieth Century
• Postwar Political Reform and a New Economy
• Slavery, Insurrection, and Civil War
• Virginia's Role in the New Nation
• The American Revolution
• Tidewater Plantations and Westward Migration
• A Royal Colony
• Early Settlements of the Virginia Company
• Government, Politics, and Higher Education
• Economy
• Geography
• Facts and Figures

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