# Freedom Writer: Virginia Foster Durr, Letters from the Civil Rights Years

Patricia Sullivan discussed her book "Freedom Writer: Virginia Foster Durr, Letters from The Civil Rights Years" in a program sponsored by the Library's John W. Kluge Center. As a privileged white Southern woman, Durr (1903-1999) was an unlikely yet monumental champion of civil rights. "Freedom Writer" is a collection of her letters during three decades of struggle for racial equality. In 1951, returning to her native Alabama after a 21-year absence, she was deeply affronted by the same unchecked racism she recalled from her childhood. To help understand the South and battle her sense of isolation, Durr wrote hundreds of letters--humorous, sharp and observant--to her friends outside the region, among them Eleanor Roosevelt, Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson, Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, journalist Jessica Mitford and historian C. Vann Woodward.

- Kind: Talk
- Year: 2006
- By: John W. Kluge Center (library Of Congress)
- Genres: History
- Archive: [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/2021687752/)
- Licence or status: Rights statement at the Library of Congress (as the archive states it)
- Credit: Library of Congress
- Who can watch: Teens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/loc/2021687752?play=1)