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Outside the Magic Circle: The Autobiography of Virginia Foster Durr
Virginia Foster Durr is the daughter of a Presbyterian minister, and she was raised in Birmingham during the early years of this century. She attended Wellesley for two years, until her family’s circumstances made it impossible for her to continue. Virginia’s sister Josephine married Hugo Black; and in 1926 Virginia married a young lawyer named Clifford Durr. The Durrs mov
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Paperback
,
380 pages
Published
June 30th 1990
by Fire Ant Books
(first published 1985)
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Community Reviews
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This book is a fascinating look at Southern politics during one of the most tumultuous times in American history. From the leftovers of slavery, to the midst of the Great Depression, to the Women's rights movement, to the end of the Civil Rights Movement, Virginia Durr weaves an interesting tale of her little part in it all. I really appreciate too, how she tells the story in such a southern way (using southern phrases, the rhythm in her words, and the name-dropping and a little story about each
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Sweet Jesus, what a life.
Virginia Foster Durr
spent her formative years in Alabama, attended school in the northeast, hobnobbed with everybody from Studs Terkel to Eleanor Roosevelt on Capitol Hill, and finally moved to Montgomery, AL, in 1951, soon before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a city bus. All this while ceaselessly campaigning for progressive political and social causes, much to her family's dismay.
If the style of this book sounds conversational, that's because it is - it's ...more
If the style of this book sounds conversational, that's because it is - it's ...more
This is a wonderful biography about Virginia Durr and how she worked for civil rights in the South.
In a world of instant fame and mass marketed champions, in short a world with more heroics than actually heroes,Virginia Foster Durr's exciting but modest account of a life lived through the crucial battles for human rights in Twentieth Century America will lift the reader above the din and allow him or her to experience history as it was and contemplate the world as it is today and the kind of true, everyday, simple and civil courage it takes to be kind and to be just. If more people read this
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Fascinating autobiography of Virginia Foster Durr, whose Antebellum Southern heritage is transformed by her husband and her roles within the FDR Administration, life during the Great Depression and New Deal and personal involvement in the anti-communism movement in Washington DC in the 1940s and 50s and Civil Rights Movement in Alabama in the 1950s and 60s.
I'm still not sure how I would classify Virginia Foster Durr, but did find her life and stories riveting and the book does offer some interes ...more
I'm still not sure how I would classify Virginia Foster Durr, but did find her life and stories riveting and the book does offer some interes ...more
I was first read enchanted by this in college when I borrowed a copy from my bestie, who was taking a women's studies class. So it was a personal (re)discovery to find this book again. Before memoir became a modern genre, this is an old school autobiography told in with high southern charm, and the southern flair for storytelling. Along with Helen Keller's The Story of my Life and Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody, this book is one of my old school Southern faves.
This "autobiography" of civil rights and voting rights activist Virginia Durr was compiled from oral histories collected from her at two different times. As such it is somewhat "chatty" and choppy, but does one a good sense of who Virginia Durr was. She does not reveal much of her inner thoughts but her reactions to things and people over her life thru the the early 1970's. She lived until 1999 so much was missed.
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