About

Just three months before Curtis Harris was born, the Virginia State Legislature passed the Racial Integrity Act, which banned interracial marriage down to “a single drop” of African blood. Harris was the sixth child of an impoverished sharecropper and his wife, living in a desolate outpost of the commonwealth while the sweeping regulation was passed by the most prominent men in the state. In time, however, Harris would lead the fight against this law and many others designed to maintain the control of the white majority over minorities in Virginia and in the rest of the South. His inspirational story follows him from Dendron to Hopewell and then to the forefront of America’s civil rights battles, arm in arm with the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Arrested multiple times, beaten and discriminated against, Harris persevered to change entrenched racism and become the first Black mayor in his hometown. Admired and honored, he serves as a symbol of what be accomplished by a lone individual with the courage to demand justice.