Educating Citizens
Preparing America's Undergraduates for Lives of Moral and Civic Responsibility
Chapter One
EDUCATING CITIZENS
IN A PLURALISTIC SOCIETY
WE BEGIN WITH the story of Virginia Foster Durr, who was a friend of
the two senior authors of this book. Mrs. Durr, who died in 1999 at the
age of ninety-six, was a remarkable woman not only in her contributions
to racial justice and civil liberties but in the surprising direction her life
took, given the culture in which she grew up. Virginia Durr was a white
woman from a genteel (and racist) Alabama family, yet she became a
major figure in the black civil rights movement. She helped integrate
Washington, D.C., and Birmingham, Alabama, and fought for years to
end the poll tax, which was used to prevent blacks, women, and poor people
from voting in the South until 1964, when the Voting Rights Act was
passed. We begin with this story not because Virginia was dramatically
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