Curtis J. Holt Sr. was a social activist who challenged the imposition of a moral code through subsidies and other forms of state funding. He is most notable for the changes he brought to local governance in Richmond, Virginia.
Holt was born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina in 1920, one of eight children in a relatively poor family. His farmer father died when he was aged 13 and his mother relocated the family to Richmond, Virginia in 1934, where Holt took a job to help support the family.
In 1941 he was injured at a construction job at Virginia Union University (VUU, a historically black university), leaving him out of work for three years. In 1963, he fell down an elevator shaft causing another injury which put him out of work permanently. That forced him and his family into public housing, where he found poor living conditions and repressive conditions.
Holt took issue with the repressive rules governing public housing, such as a prohibition by the Richmond Housing Authority (RRHA) on tenant organizations and meetings on RRHA property. [1] In the mid-1960s he attempted to organize the tenants of Creighton Court, his residence, into an association, and was almost evicted for purported unreported income for cutting hair of his Boy Scout Team which he was a Cub Master at Fourth Baptist Church. Holt, later won the case and lived in Creighton Court until 1986 with his family consisting of his wife: Alto Mae Holt, sons (Curtis J. Holt Jr and Walter Holt), and daughters (Valarie Holt and Constance Holt-Christian).
In 1972 Richmond City Council elections were suspended after Holt filed a lawsuit challenging the city's annexation of part of Chesterfield County. This annexation was part of a larger movement called Massive Resistance, and was an attempt by the largely white city council to retain a white majority in the city during a time of immense white flight. Holt argued that the annexation diluted black voting power. [2]
In 1977, federal courts ordered a plan to replace the at-large voting system for the council with a larger city council divided into nine wards. [3] The result was a black-majority city council that then elected Henry L. Marsh as the city's first black mayor.
Holt was also known for engaging in issues of class (specifically lower and middle class) that the mainstream civil rights movement did not want to confront. His abilities to organize poor whites in Richmond’s public housing was particularly effective in changing RRHA policy.
One of the RRHA policies he disputed was clearly intended to enforce a particular moral code. Specifically, RRHA would not allow single female parents habitation in public housing. Because of this, Holt argued that women who were single and became pregnant felt pressure to either have an abortion and lose the child or lose their home. Holt's support of this issue was ahead of his time in terms of championing the right of a single parent female to control her reproductive rights. [4]
In 2000, many years after his death, Richmond's City Council voted to change the name of the Fifth Street Viaduct from Stonewall Jackson Memorial Bridge to the Curtis Holt Sr. Bridge.
The 1954–1968 civil rights movement in the United States was preceded by a decades-long campaign by African Americans and their like-minded allies to end legalized racial discrimination, disenfranchisement and racial segregation in the United States. The movement has its origins in the Reconstruction era during the late 19th century, although it made its largest legislative gains in the mid-1960s after years of direct actions and grassroots protests. The social movement's major nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience campaigns eventually secured new protections in federal law for the human rights of all Americans.
Richmond is the capital city of the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. It is the center of the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) and the Greater Richmond Region. Richmond was incorporated in 1742 and has been an independent city since 1871. As of the 2010 census, the city's population was 204,214; in 2020, the population had grown to 226,610, making Richmond the fourth-most populous city in Virginia. The Richmond Metropolitan Area has a population of 1,260,029, the third-most populous metro in the state.
Petersburg is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the population was 32,420. The Bureau of Economic Analysis combines Petersburg with Dinwiddie County for statistical purposes. The city is 21 miles (34 km) south of the commonwealth (state) capital city of Richmond.
Henrico County, officially the County of Henrico, is located in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the population was 306,935. In 2019, the population was estimated to be 330,818, making it the fifth-most populous county in Virginia. Henrico County is included in the Greater Richmond Region. There is no incorporated community within Henrico County; therefore, there is no incorporated county seat either. Laurel, an unincorporated CDP, serves this function.
Chesterfield County is located just south of Richmond in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The county's borders are primarily defined by the James River to the north and the Appomattox River to the south. Its county seat is Chesterfield Court House.
Joseph (Joe) Zuken was a popular Communist politician in Winnipeg and the longest serving elected Communist party politician in North America. He served on the Winnipeg city council from 1961 to 1983.
Massive resistance was a strategy declared by U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd Sr. of Virginia and his brother-in-law James M. Thomson, who represented Alexandria in the Virginia General Assembly, to get the state's white politicians to pass laws and policies to prevent public school desegregation, particularly after the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision in 1954. Many schools, and even an entire school system, were shut down in 1958 and 1959 in attempts to block integration, before both the Virginia Supreme Court and a special three-judge panel of Federal District judges from the Eastern District of Virginia, sitting at Norfolk, declared those policies unconstitutional.
The civil rights movement (1896–1954) was a long, primarily nonviolent action to bring full civil rights and equality under the law to all Americans. The era has had a lasting impact on American society – in its tactics, the increased social and legal acceptance of civil rights, and in its exposure of the prevalence and cost of racism.
Oliver White Hill, Sr. was an American civil rights attorney from Richmond, Virginia. His work against racial discrimination helped end the doctrine of "separate but equal." He also helped win landmark legal decisions involving equality in pay for black teachers, access to school buses, voting rights, jury selection, and employment protection. He retired in 1998 after practicing law for almost 60 years. Among his numerous awards was the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which U.S. President Bill Clinton awarded him in 1999.
The Virginia Conventions have been the assemblies of delegates elected for the purpose of establishing constitutions of fundamental law for the Commonwealth of Virginia superior to General Assembly legislation. Their constitutions and subsequent amendments span four centuries across the territory of modern-day Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky.
Jackson Ward is a historically African-American district in Richmond, Virginia with a long tradition of African-American businesses. It is located less than a mile from the Virginia State Capitol, sitting to the west of Court End and north of Broad Street. It was listed as a National Historic Landmark District in 1978. "Jackson Ward" was originally the name of the area's political district within the city, or ward, from 1871 to 1905, yet has remained in use long after losing its original meaning.
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Curtis West Harris was an African-American minister, civil rights activist, and politician in Virginia. He moved to Hopewell, Virginia with his family in 1928 where he grew into manhood. Harris married Ruth Jones of Hopewell on February 20, 1946, and they had six children. His loving wife of 65 years, died on May 22, 2011 and his son, Kenneth, died on March 2, 2019. The "Harris Connection," as the family fondly calls itself, includes Harris' five children---Curtis Jr., Michael, Joanne, Karen, and Michelle as well as two daughters-in-law, one son-in-law, 19 grandchildren, 28 great grandchildren, and six great-great grandchildren.
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Henry Leander Marsh III is an American civil rights lawyer and politician. A Democrat, Marsh was elected by the city council as the first African-American mayor of Richmond, Virginia in 1977. He was elected to the Senate of Virginia in 1991, and resigned from his seat in 2014. Marsh represented the 16th district, consisting of the city of Petersburg, Dinwiddie County, and parts of the city of Richmond, and Chesterfield and Prince George counties. Marsh is now a commissioner on the Virginia Department of the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, a position to which he received appointment from Governor Terry McAuliffe promptly after his departure from the Senate in 2014.
Curtis Holt may refer to:
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