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The mill town of Danville, Virginia, saw the early efforts of an anti-segregation campaign that began with the opening of the public library to blacks. In 1960 a court order forced the facility to desegregate; instead, library leaders closed the building for several months. When it reopened as an integrated library, all seats had been removed and users were charged a fee for a library card. This campaign to desegregate led to the founding of the Danville Christian Progressive Association (DCPA), later an affiliate of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Local black leaders were displeased with the way the NAACP handled race matters: they were considered too slow to act because they did not want to disturb the status quo. By 1963, the DCPA’s key aim was to bring about equal access to jobs in private enterprises and municipal jobs such as firemen, policemen, clerks, and meter readers. The aim, too, was to integrate lunch counters.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s visit to Danville in 1963 to address local blacks was followed by demonstrations from the black community. Worse than “Bull” Connor’s order of fire hose attacks on protesters in Birmingham, Alabama, was Danville Mayor Julian Stinson’s order to use dogs, fire hoses, and nightsticks on protesters who marched to oppose segregation in downtown public facilities. City officials deputized garbage collectors and used them to guard the police station complex. “We will hose down the demonstrators and fill every available stockade,” Mayor Stinson declared. Local police also broke down church doors and arrested protest leaders and organizers. Some 65 protesters were injured. As a result of the brutality that blacks endured, June 10, 1963, became known as “Bloody Monday.”

Danville officials remembered an 1831 statute that led to insurrectionist Nat Turner’s hanging and its use to hang abolitionist John Brown in 1859. With this in mind, the municipal judge who heard the 1963 cases did so with a gun strapped to his waist. An attorney who tried to argue the protesters’ case was arrested. Until then, the majority of the black community was afraid to join the protest. After Bloody Monday, however, the black community became solidified in its resolve.

Jessie Carney Smith