Va-Hist Subscribers will be interested in this on-line review. Please
respect the letter and spirit of the copyright notice that appears at
the end of the review.
 
Brent Tarter
The Library of Virginia
[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> 
 
Visit the Library of Virginia's web site at http://www.lva.lib.va.us
<http://www.lva.lib.va.us> 

From: Ian Binnington, H-South [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: Thursday, September 16, 2004 9:27 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Crosspost: H-Law Review, Hardeman on Wallenstein, _Blue Laws
and Black Codes_


H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by [log in to unmask] (August, 2004)

Peter Wallenstein. _Blue Laws and Black Codes: Conflict, Courts, and
Change in Twentieth-Century Virginia_. Charlottesville: University Press
of Virginia, 2004. 280 pp. Notes, bibliography, index. $49.50 (cloth),
ISBN 0-8139-2260-7; $19.50 (paper), ISBN 0-8139-2261-5.

Reviewed for H-Law by Martin Hardeman, Eastern Illinois University.

Virginia as Analogue

In his introduction, Peter Wallenstein (Associate Professor of History
at
Virginia Polytechnic Institute) writes that _Blue Laws and Black Codes_
is
neither a comprehensive history of twentieth century Virginia nor a
comprehensive legal, constitutional or political history of the state.
He
is correct.  _Blue Laws and Black Codes_ is a collection of eight
stand-alone essays bound together by an introduction and an epilogue and
focus on legal, political and social change in Virginia roughly from
Reconstruction to the last quarter of the twentieth century.

Wallenstein's essays are also bound together by his analytical and
contextual framework.  Again and again, he points out that Virginia was
not unique.  Its issues of social, legal and perceptual change were not
limited by its state boundaries.  Virginia's residents shared with the
rest of the South the problem of creating a post-Emancipation method of
living in a biracial society.  It shared with the nation as a whole
questions of class, tradition and gender discrimination.  Grouping such
issues under the often over-lapping headings of procedure, substance and
symbolism, he attempts with varying success, to demonstrate the
inter-related nature of his eight pieces.

In the first two essays, Wallenstein explores the Virginia labor tax
which
required all healthy men between sixteen and sixty to work two days a
year
on the public roads or pay a two dollar fine and local laws restricting
commercial activity as a well as various forms of entertainment on
Sunday.
Neither were unique to Virginia or the South.  Both were based on well
established principles.  In 1894, however, the State Supreme Court
struck
down the corvee system holding that it violated Virginia's 1874
constitution.  Ninety-four years later, a combination of legislative
acts
and Supreme Court decisions found blue law restrictions unconstitutional
as well.

According to Wallenstein, the conclusions reached were reflections of a
changing society.  The corvee system was relatively cheap, but it did
not
produce the quality of roads necessary-particularly with the growing use
of the automobile.  Although the decision turned on the fine points of
Virginia constitutional law, public demand, construction expertise and
combined county, state and federal financing of roads were the decisive
forces in the background.  At the same time, increasing popular
sentiment
for and decreasing opposition to Sunday baseball games, movie shows and
open gas stations eroded official support for blue laws.

The third essay discusses the racial and sexual integration of the
Virginia bar.  Like all slave states and most others, Virginia confined
the practice of law to white men.  But, the Civil War, Emancipation and
the Fourteenth Amendment opened the courts to black male attorneys in
1869.  Twenty-four years later, a decision of the state Supreme Court
made
Belva Lockwood Virginia's first female lawyer and twenty-eight years
after
that, Inez C. Fields became the state's first African American female
lawyer.  It was 1920 before university authorities admitted white women
to
the University of Virginia's Law School and the first black applicant,
Gregory H. Swanson, was admitted in 1950 under federal court order.  "By
the mid-1970s," Wallenstein writes, "all of Virginia's law schools had
at
least some female students as well as at least some black students" and
by
1990 women constituted thirty-six percent of the University of
Virginia's
Law School's graduating class (p. 80).

The following three essays deal with the post-Second World War
resistance
to the Jim Crow system and the rise of the Civil Rights movement.  While
this is generally familiar territory, the concentration on Virginia
(particularly the author's emphasis on a cohort of activist Howard Law
School graduates in chapter four) clarifies the similarities and
differences between it and the states of the Deep South.  Opposition to
desegregation was no less determined but violence seemed more rare, for
example.  In, "Loving vs Virginia," the subject of the sixth chapter,
serves as a kind of climax.

Even before 1954's _Brown vs Board of Education_, Virginians realized
the
fragility of the Jim Crow system.  Beginning with the schools,
transportation, housing, the courts and even public accommodations, life
was forcibly integrated by decisions of the federal Supreme Court or
acts
of the federal legislature.  Yet, the state's definition of race and its
laws against miscegenation seemed somehow immune from outside
interference.  As early as the 1690s, Virginia law had defined the races
and determined who could marry whom.  These definitions changed over
time,
but even the Supreme Court implicitly agreed in a series of cases in the
1880s and 1890s that states had the right to make such definitions and
prohibit miscegenation.

In 1958, however, Richard Loving (white) and Mildred Jeter (black)
married
in the District of Columbia and returned to live in Caroline County.
They
were arrested, tried and sentenced to one year in prison or an exile of
twenty-five years from the state.  In 1967, the United States Supreme
Court overturned the conviction on constitutional grounds in a seven to
two decision.  The Court declared, "we find the racial classifications
in
these statutes repugnant to the Fourteenth Amendment under our
Constitution, the freedom to marry or not marry, a person of another
race
resides within the individual and cannot be infringed by the State" (p.
167).  And, so fell the last and perhaps the most symbolic vestige of
the
Jim Crow system.

In the seventh essay, Wallenstein combines challenges to the white
primary, the poll tax, voting rights, reapportionment and redistricting
to
produce his best integrated chapter.  Each of these challenges
undermined
the traditional politics of Virginia.  But, despite change, the struggle
over who would control the game, precisely what the rules of that game
were and what the rewards of the game would be, he points out, remained.

The eighth and final essay is a continuation of both the seventh and
fourth.  Given the changed nature of Virginia politics and given the
equally changed attitudes toward both race and gender, the fact that
women
and African Americans play significant roles in the judiciary comes as
something less than a surprise.

Peter Wallenstein's _Blue Laws and Black Codes_ is a work of prodigious
research.  Its individual essays will be of great use to scholars and
students investigating specific topics.  But, as a book, it does not
hold
together.  It still reflects the disparate origins of its parts.  Its
interpretations are too often obvious and too often one dimensional.
Finally, the editorial staff of the University of Virginia Press should
be
ashamed.  The number of transpositions of dates (1894 to 1984) and the
number of typos is simply unacceptable for a major academic press.


Purchasing through these links helps support H-Net:
http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=28081&cgi=product&isbn
=0813922607
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0813922607/hnetreview-20?dev-t=ma
son-wrapper%26camp=2025%26link_code=xm2
http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/0813922615/hnetreview-21
http://service.bfast.com/bfast/click?bfmid=2181&sourceid=41034484&bfpid=
0813922607&bfmtype=book

Copyright (c) 2004 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the
redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational
purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web
location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities &
Social Sciences Online. For any other proposed use, contact the Reviews
editorial staff at [log in to unmask] 

To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions
at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html