The residential segregation ordinances varied considerably from city to
city in Virginia. Richmond, for example, had a strict block by block
method; Norfolk had a more complicated one involving determining the
majority in a given block. Mr. Dixon is certainly correct in pointing
out the importance of the 1912 state statute--most of the localities
adopted their plans around that time, 1912-1914. I first was acquainted
with the existence of these laws when Oliver Hill educated me, in the
early 1970s, on the history of Virginia race relations  in the 20th
century. I found information about them in an early 1960s article by
Charles Wynes and in Jack Kirby's book, _Darkness at the Dawning_. Kirby
cites a good article by Roger Rice in the 1968 Journal of Southern
History, though I think, he doesn't say, that he drew most of his
Virginia information from his research for the Governor Davis biography.
More recently, the Silver book, already mentioned, on Richmond and Earl
Lewis's book on the Norfolk black community, _In Their Interests_
discusses the Richmond and Norfolk experiences. J. Douglas Smith in
_Managing White Supremacy_ also discusses them on a state-wide basis.
Michael Klarman in _From Jim Crow to Civil Rights_ has a lengthy legal
discussion of the Buchanan v. Warley case, with excellent citations of
additional works on residential segregation.

And yes, the effects of the laws far outlasted the 1917 ruling. Norfolk
continued to enforce its law, contending it differed from the Buchanan
case, for almost a decade. By the 1920s, of course, restrictive
covenants, the practices of lenders and realtors, and white community
mores (backed, at times, by intimidation, cross-burnings, etc.) served
the purpose of enforcing segregation in all new developments. Cities
that grew up in the first half of the 20th century, like Newport News,
had an almost complete apartheid--a separate city, one white, one black,
one on Washington Ave., one on Jefferson Ave., separated by twenty
tracks of the C&O Railroad. Virginia' s still pretty segregated
residentially, though its not all coming from the white side now. The
past, as William Faulkner famously said, isn't gone, it's isn't even past.

All Best,
Jim Hershman

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