The Negro in Virginia

Book excerpt: The story of the Negro in Virgina was planned originally as one of a series of racial studies undertaken by the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration. Although the Federal Writers' Project no longer exists, the assignment has been completed under the administration of the Virginia Writers' Project, whose State supervisor, Mrs. Eudora Ramsay Richardson, has ably and sympathetically edited the manuscript. The only all-Negro unit of a State-wide writers' project, it has enjoyed an administrative and technical cooperation from the entire staff of Virginia writers that has contributed much to the volume. It is appropriate that the first WPA State book on the Negro be produced in Virginia ; for here the first African natives were brought and held in enforced servitude, and here also, more than two centuries later, freedom for some 5,000,000 of their descendants was assured on the surrender ground of Appomattox. -- Preface.