Media: Slideshow
Danville's Role in the Readjuster Party's Defeat in 1883
Coalition Rule in Danville
This detail from a broadside petition published in October 1883 protests the "injustice and humiliation" that white people are having to endure in Danville under the political rule of the biracial Readjuster Party. Titled "Coalition Rule in Danville," this document, signed by a group of "merchants and manufacturers and mechanics," is also known as the Danville Circular. Complaints registered in the broadside include white people having to pay for the education of African American children, the hiring of "four negroes—something before that time unknown to the history of the town" as policemen, and permitting blacks to rent stalls in the marketplace. ("The market once occupied in all its stalls by polite white gentlemen, with their clean, white aprons, and the most inticing meats and vegetables upon their boards, is now the scene of filth, stench, crowds of loitering and idle negroes, drunkenness, obscene language, and pettit thieves.") The signees urged their fellow citizens to vote for Conservative Democratic political candidates "for unless they are elected we are doomed."
Created: October 1883
Medium: Broadside
Courtesy of Library of Virginia
Danville Times
The lead story of the November 9, 1883, edition of the Danville Times reports on the statewide election in which the Democratic Party gained a majority over the Readjuster Party. The headline of the article, "Glorious Victory! Mahoneism Killed and the State Redeemed," reveals the newspaper's bias toward the Democratic Party. (William Mahone was the leader of the Readjuster Party.)