Why was Virginia so staunchly segregationist during the civil rights era?

[AN63093]

During the Robert C Byrd era, Virginia was a states rights states, and was closely aligned to West Virginia. However, since 2000, as John Warner and Robert C Byrd began to align themselves with McCain mavericks, by criticizing Dubya's conduct during Iraq War, Virginia, who elected Doug Wilder, became a progressive state

My apologies to the OP for the tangent.. but I just couldn't help myself on this one.  This is quite possibly the worst explanation I've ever seen for why VA became a "progressive state" (which, of course, it is not).

[AN63093]

Because it was a practically a Deep South state with less Appalachian influence than Tennessee or North Carolina

It would appear your understanding of Virginia history is quite.. shall we say, unsophisticated.

[AN63093]

That is a better post and I didn't mean to sound annoyed, but precision of language is something that I can get quite anal about, and I did not agree with your original phrasing.  Now that you've elaborated, I still do not think you are correctly describing VA.  This has nothing to do, by the way, with post WW2 growth in VA (nor was it what I was suggesting).

The fact that VA had a large black slave population is pretty much the only thing it ever had in common with the Deep South.  There have been significant differences ever since, from the antebellum period up to the modern day, which is why Southerners themselves rather hesitantly describe VA as a Southern state (and many will insist it is not Southern at all).

Take, for example, the founding of VA.  VA was founded first as the Virginia Company, established with the purpose of finding gold in the New World (there was none in VA, as it turned out), and then later after the colony was established, it was primarily settled by English gentry (some of which actually had ties to English nobility- some of the only settlers in US history that were legitimate aristocrats) with the aim of setting up country estates modeled off of say, Yorkshire.  These estates came about around the James River and the Chesapeake Bay, and were originally worked by indentured servants- some of which were black, but many were actually white.  The formal establishment of slavery was not until much later in the late 1600s-early 1700s.  Contrast now to, for example, SC- which was settled much later by an entirely different group of people, i.e. English slavers coming over from Barbados with the explicit intent of starting plantations.  Or contrast to a state like LA, which was not originally an English colony at all.

The western parts of VA were settled by Scots-Irish, and some Germans, many of which came down from central PA into the Shenandoah Valley along the Great Wagon Road.  So to say the state has "less" Appalachian influence than TN or NC.. while perhaps technically true, is quite misleading since a whole half of the state was mostly settled by those who would comprise of modern "Appalachian culture", and for practically the entirety of VA history, to the current day, there has always been a pretty stark difference (both culturally and otherwise) between the mountainous western half, and the piedmont/coastal plain in the east where most of the population is and where the wealthier English planters originally settled.

Your description of VA being profound in terms of Southern Agrarian culture is, again, explaining the state in a superficial, sort of "junior high textbook" way.  VA's plantations were founded at a much earlier date than the Deep South, and in contrast to the Deep South, were primarily tobacco and some wheat.  Compare to the Deep South, which was primarily sugar, rice, and of course- cotton.  However, VA had few cotton plantations and by 1860, they were practically non existent.  The economic interests of state like VA were not necessarily going to be the same as a state like, say, AL, GA, or MS.  

Which, speaking of economic activity, when you say that VA was the "economic and political center of the CSA," you are again, being misleading.  The capital was indeed in Richmond, but was not originally there and moved for political reasons.  When you say that VA is the "first state to secede after Fort Sumter", you are obfuscating the history- I'm not sure if intentional or not, but clearly misleading.  VA's reasons for secession were not exactly the same as say, SC, and VA was the one of the last states to secede- it was 8th, on April 17, 1861, and did not do so until Lincoln called for states to provide volunteers to recapture the fort.  This was after the Montgomery Convention and when the first Confederate Constitution was signed, which was in March and VA was not a signatory at that time.  Your mention that VA had many Confederate veterans really says nothing and is a bit of a distraction- VA was by far the largest state in the CSA, so obviously it was going to have the most veterans; that should not be surprising.

Also, in terms of economics, it could be said that VA was the closest thing the CSA had to an industrialized state, which is not saying much- but it did have 3 of the largest cities in the top 10 of the confederacy (more than any other state), the confederacy's only real iron works, some of the only shipyards (the only naval yard, I believe), the largest flour mills, a more extensive rail network, and so on.  Even in those days, VA was resembling (and had actual links to) the Mid-Atlantic and the Northeast much more than, say, MS or AL.

About the only thing I really agree with is when you state that social structures were insular and restrictive in VA, and that is probably a true statement... there is an argument to be made that VA has been the most elitist state throughout US history- something that perhaps gets closer to the real answer of the OP's question.

But to say the answer is because it was a "Deep South state" (not true) that had "less Appalachian influence than TN or NC" (maybe true, but misleading and irrelevant), is a complete distortion of history.

[AN63093]

Tachi, I do appreciate the long and thoughtful reply- I did not mean to be so snarky earlier and so I take back some of those comments (the junior HS one, etc.); I underestimated your willingness to actually go deep into a topic.  My presumption on internet forums is typically that people are not interested in discussing anything with any depth and simply want to troll, lecture, or chest-thump, and that is a presumption that I rarely re-visit, but I have in your case.

Reading over your post, I find that I agree with large portions of it.  My initial issue with your description was perhaps a matter of semantics- I think that VA undoubtedly shares at least some characteristics of the Deep South (and particularly did in antebellum era), but I took umbrage at the way you were describing it because I felt it glossed over a very important fact- that there are some significant and important differences between VA and a state like, say, MS (and I don't mean today, I am talking about in history).  I think many amateur historians (and some professional ones, unfortunately), all too often describe the CSA in broad terms, as if it was a singular, monolithic entity.. when in reality, that obfuscates that there were important differences between regions, people of different classes, historical roots, and so on.  And I think to call VA a "Deep South" state, or to imply it, perpetuates this sort of myth-making.

That is why, e.g., I brought up plantation differences and so on.  People often talk about the planter class as a single entity, but in reality, the economic and political interests of a cotton plantation owner in AL may be quite different from a tobacco plantation owner in VA.  The history of the respective states is another important point in this respect- people talk about the CSA as a single political entity, when I think that is an extremely inaccurate depiction- particularly in that time period when differences between each state could be drastic.  The formation of VA vis-à-vis a place like, say, SC, is illustrative of this.. when SC was formed at a much later date, by slavers coming over from Barbados with the specific intent of running slave plantations.  I think it is important to remember that you had a completely different group of people settling VA (and with a different purpose), then say, MS or SC (much less LA), and so we should be hesitant to just group these together and say, well, there were lots of blacks in all of them so they must be the same.

Which speaking of that, I think you're confusing correlation with causation.  Surely proximity to a large black population may be related in some way to racial attitudes, perhaps a necessary but not sufficient condition.  Because, especially after the Great Migration, the Deep South was not necessarily unique in this regard.  Many large cities in the North by 1960 were at least 10%, if not 20% or more black (some quickly became over 50%, such as Newark or Detroit, which is today >80% black), and you see varying levels of racial attitudes between them.  Of course, Detroit had its own issues with this in that regard, and that shouldn't be ignored either.

But that's not necessarily the whole story and I think you're cherry picking examples to fit your narrative.  For example, your insistence that VA has a fundamentally Southern core (which I don't disagree with), but you could easily find counter-examples, like that the "Coke/Soda line" tends to be south of VA (not just south of NoVA), or that the architecture in VA is very different from the Deep South.. e.g., a lot of the urban housing stock in places like Richmond, Norfolk, etc., are of brick-rowhome style, very similar in construction to Baltimore or Philly, but very unlike New Orleans or Atlanta.  My point is not that VA is not a Southern state, my point is that I don't think it's very helpful to fixate on individual factoids to shape your narrative.

You mention occam's razor (which is fine, I'm a big proponent of using that), and you say well- the reason the Lost Cause narrative was particularly potent in VA was due to the high black population.  I think there's perhaps an even simpler reason than that- the Lost Cause narrative was powerful because they lost.  Consider that VA was in a different position than some other Southern states which were newer, relatively recently formed, and didn't have the same history.  VA was arguably the most powerful state in the country with the longest history, dating back to the founding- in fact, VA has a legitimate claim as to be the birthplace of the US, was the home of a lot of the founding fathers, and so on.  To be at that high point and then lose a war and go through reconstruction etc., will be particularly humiliating and permanently enter the psyche of the culture for at least a generation (as it turned out, more than that), and it wouldn't be until WW2 that VA would evolve into, once again, one of the wealthiest and most powerful states in the US (ironically, this time, due to the growth in federal power and bureaucracy).

One last quibble, which is not that important for either of our posts, but just something worth mentioning, and that is- I would be hesitant to proclaim that slavery simply "began" (as if it didn't exist one day, and then it suddenly did) in 1619 in VA.  This is a date that is often cited by people who seem to want to portray slavery as existing as a formal institution since the colonies formed, but the reality is a lot more complicated than that.  When the English first came over as the Virginia Company, there was no law about slavery in VA at all.  Blacks (and whites, for that matter) were brought over as indentured servants, a holdover from medieval feudalism.  Some blacks owned land (and curiously, even slaves) in early VA.  The institution of slavery developed slowly, first in the courts, over the decades.  The first court decision on this was in 1640, and there were further decisions on this through the late 1600s, until the Virginia Slave Code was adopted in 1705.  The incident you referred to in 1619 is when English privateers seized 19 Africans from the Portuguese and brought them to Jamestown.  They became indentured servants (and joined a group of white English servants), and then were later freed.  It is not as if the plantations depicted in people's imagination (like Gone with the Wind etc) just suddenly sprung into existence in 1619.. the development of slavery was much more gradual and complicated than that.

[AN63093]

Virginia isn't Deep South but it was largely the lowland South until the DC suburban boom. I don't really like the concept of deep south, it makes far more sense to talk about lowland vs. mountain South.

Up to a point.

The Tidewater are lowland, but they are still quite a bit of ways different from that of Alabama or Mississippi.

Shenandoah is mountainous [for The South], but the tradition has been vastly different from Eastern Tennessee or Kentucky, only really starting to finish convergence in the 2000's.

And of course The Byrd Machine was based in the Shenandoah largely, but still controlled the state.

^^