Letter from Durr to Director of Highlander Folk School (Modified)

Some of the language and phrasing in this document has been modified from the original.

Head Note: Virginia Foster Durr was a white woman who supported civil rights for African Americans in Montgomery. Here, Durr writes the director of the Highlander Folk School and his wife. Highlander was a center for training civil rights activists and labor organizers.

January 30, 1956

Dear Myles and Zilphia:

I just received a newsletter from Highlander giving a summary of the past year’s activities. I think you should add how much you had to do with the Montgomery Bus Boycott which is really making history.

LIFE, TIME, CBS, NBC, and countless other papers have been down here covering it. I think it is the first time that a whole Negro community has ever stuck together this way and for so long and I think they are going to win it.

But how your part comes in is through the effect the school had on Mrs. Rosa Parks. When she came back she was so happy and felt so liberated. She said the discrimination got worse and worse to bear AFTER having, for the first time in her life, been free of it at Highlander. I am sure that had a lot to do with her daring to risk arrest as she is naturally a very quiet person although she has a strong sense of pride and is, in my opinion, a really noble woman. But you and Zilphia should take pride in what you did for her and what she is doing.

Lots of love to all, come and see for yourself.

VA

Source: Excerpt from a letter written by Virginia Foster Durr to Myles and Zilphia Horton, January 30, 1956. Montgomery, Alabama.