The Dream is Lost: Voting Rights and the Politics of Race in Richmond, Virginia by Julian Maxwell Hayter (review)

A century after Reconstruction, Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederacy, transformed into a city with African American political leadership. In The Dream is Lost: Voting Rights and the Politics of Race in Richmond, Virginia, Julian Maxwell Hayter, a historian at the University of Richmond, chronicles this racial, social, and political revolution by taking a wide view of grassroots activism, black middle-class leadership, municipal politics, and white backlash to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA). Hayter acknowledges the victories of the civil rights movement that brought increased black political power in Richmond but, as his title suggests, a truly interracial, equal, and just society never materialized. According to Hayter, Richmond serves as a microcosm of how the civil rights movement came up short nationwide. The blame for this, Hayter argues, rests primarily on white political resistance to black rule and he demonstrates the breadth of racial strategies to undermine black political power in Richmond after 1965. At the same time, Hayter explains how African American voters and elected officials made decisions that ultimately backfired, resulting in political isolation and tipping the balance of power back to Richmond's white business and power elite into the 1980s.

From beginning to end, Hayter's story revolves around the Richmond Crusade for Voters. An organization of black professionals, the Crusade came together in 1956 in response to massive resistance sparked after the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Crusade members, according to Hayter, "skipped the protest portion of the freedom struggle and went straight to politics" (pp. 3–4). The Crusade sponsored voter registration campaigns, organized poll tax payments, and worked to realize black political influence before and after the VRA. Crusade members celebrated and capitalized on the VRA, but quickly realized the fight for political power would continue along racial fault lines. As black Richmond citizens made gains after 1965, "whites began to associate their appeals for representative equality not merely with Black Power movements but with the urban tumult unfolding in America's cities in the late 1960s" (p. 100). White resentment evolved into cries of discrimination and reverse racism and to fight black electoral gains, white politicians pushed to annex part of neighboring Chesterfield County in a brazen ploy to add white voters in Richmond. Courts of law eventually upheld the annexation, but in the meantime during the 1970s, African Americans in Richmond won a black majority city council after racial redistricting granted the city's black population fair representation at city hall. Gaining a black majority, however, created more problems than it solved. White citizens claimed black politicians governed only for African Americans, and while political power shifted, white business interests continued to steer both the local economy and city hall. "Racial redistricting may have insured that minorities could elect black candidates," Hayter explains, "but districts also intensified racial animosity at city hall" (p. 15). Ultimately, rather than balance political power, racial redistricting undercut the Crusade's momentum, gifted whites with a narrative of reverse discrimination, and isolated black voices in governance as their urban political capital shrank while white suburbs prospered.

Drawing on primary sources from archival collections, local and national newspapers, city files, court cases, and oral histories, Hayter details a long, complex story that highlights the fallout from the VRA. Cutting through the convoluted strategies of white resistance, A Dream is Lost points out where the promises of the VRA fell short and why.