Editing Virginia (section)

===Reconstruction and segregation===
[[File:War time view of Norfolk Va Navy Yard 1918 (49090133192).jpg|thumb|With nearly 800,000&nbsp;soldiers passing through, [[Hampton Roads]] was the second-largest port of embarkation during [[World War I]].<ref name=embarkation>{{cite news |url= https://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-nws-wwi-port-of-embarkation-20170729-story.html |title= On this day in 1917, a giant WWI port of embarkation began to transform Hampton Roads |first= Mark St. John |last= Erickson |newspaper= Virginia Daily Press |date= July 29, 2017 |access-date= August 10, 2022}}</ref>|alt=Several World War I ships line a port crowded with warehouses, with a city skyline behind them.]]
Virginia was formally restored to the United States in 1870, due to the work of the [[Committee of Nine]].{{sfn|Heinemann|Kolp|Parent|Shade|2007|pp=249–250}} During the post-war [[Reconstruction era of the United States|Reconstruction era]], African Americans were able to unite in communities, particularly around [[Richmond, Virginia|Richmond]], [[Danville, Virginia|Danville]], and the [[Tidewater (region)|Tidewater region]], and take a greater role in Virginia society; many achieved some land ownership during the 1870s.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Medford|first=Edna Greene|author-link=Edna Greene Medford|title=Land and Labor: The Quest for Black Economic Independence on Virginia's Lower Peninsula, 1865–1880|journal=Virginia Magazine of History and Biography|volume=100|issue=4|date=October 1992|jstor=4249314|pages=567–582|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4249314|access-date=May 21, 2021}}</ref>{{sfn|Davis|2006|pp=328–329}} Virginia [[Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1868|adopted a constitution in 1868]] which guaranteed political, civil, and [[Voting rights in the United States|voting rights]], and provided for free public schools.{{sfn|Morgan|1992|pp=160–166}} However, with many railroad lines and other infrastructure destroyed during the Civil War, the Commonwealth was deeply in debt, and in the late 1870s redirected money from public schools to pay bondholders. The [[Readjuster Party]] formed in 1877 and won legislative power in 1879 by uniting Black and white Virginians behind a shared opposition to debt payments and the perceived [[planter class|plantation elites]].{{sfn|Dailey|Gilmore|Simon|2000|pp=90–96}}

The Readjusters focused on building up schools, like [[Virginia Tech]] and [[Virginia State University|Virginia State]], and successfully forced [[West Virginia]] to share in the pre-war debt.<ref>{{cite book |last= Tarter |first= Brent |title= A Saga of the New South: Race, Law, and Public Debt in Virginia |location= Charlottesville |publisher= University of Virginia Press |year= 2016 |pages= 14, 71 |isbn= 978-0-8139-3876-9 |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=DJyBCwAAQBAJ}}</ref> But in 1883, they were divided by a proposed repeal of [[anti-miscegenation laws]], and days before that year's election, a [[Danville Massacre|riot in Danville]], involving armed policemen, left four Black men and one white man dead.<ref>{{cite journal |last= Dailey |first= Jane |title= Deference and Violence in the Postbellum Urban South: Manners and Massacres in Danville, Virginia |journal= The Journal of Southern History |volume= 63 |number= 3 |year= 1997 |pages= 553–590 |doi= 10.2307/2211650 |jstor= 2211650 |url= https://www.jstor.org/stable/2211650. |access-date= May 13, 2021 | issn = 0022-4642}}</ref> These events motivated a push by white supremacists to seize political power through [[Voter suppression in the United States|voter suppression]], and segregationists in the [[Democratic Party of Virginia|Democratic Party]] won the legislature that year and [[Solid South|maintained control]] for decades.{{sfn|Dailey|Gilmore|Simon|2000|pp=99–103}} They passed [[Jim Crow laws]] that established a [[Racial segregation in the United States|racially segregated society]], and in 1902 rewrote the [[Constitution of Virginia|state constitution]] to include a [[Poll tax (United States)|poll tax]] and other voter registration measures that effectively [[Disfranchisement after the Reconstruction era|disenfranchised]] most African Americans and many poor whites.{{sfn|Wallenstein|2007|pp=253–254}}

New economic forces meanwhile industrialized the Commonwealth. Virginian [[James Albert Bonsack]] invented the tobacco cigarette rolling machine in 1880 leading to new large-scale production centered around Richmond. Railroad magnate [[Collis Potter Huntington]] founded [[Newport News Shipbuilding]] in 1886, which was responsible for building 38 warships for the [[U.S. Navy]] between 1907 and 1923.{{sfn|Styron|2011|pp=42–43}} During [[World War I]], German submarines attacked ships outside the port,{{sfn|Feuer|1999|pp=50–52}} which was a major site for transportation of soldiers and supplies.<ref name=embarkation/> After the war, a homecoming parade to honor African-American troops was [[1919 Norfolk race riot|attacked in July 1919]] by the city's police as part of a renewed white-supremacy movement, known as [[Red Summer]].<ref>{{cite news |url= https://roanoke.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-remembering-the-red-summer-of-1919/article_25cd5f5c-8588-58af-84c9-835d381df8ec.html |title= Editorial: Remembering the Red Summer of 1919 |newspaper= The Roanoke Times |date= July 21, 2019 |access-date= June 23, 2021}}</ref> The shipyard continued building warships in [[World War II]], and quadrupled its pre-war labor force to 70,000 by 1943. The [[Radford Army Ammunition Plant|Radford Arsenal]] outside [[Blacksburg, Virginia|Blacksburg]] also employed 22,000&nbsp;workers making explosives,<ref>{{cite magazine |first= Charles |last= Johnson |title= V for Virginia: The Commonwealth Goes to War |magazine= Virginia Magazine of History and Biography |volume= 100 |number= 3 |date= July 1992 |pages= 365–398 |jstor= 4249293 |url= https://www.jstor.org/pss/4249293}}</ref> while the [[Torpedo Factory Art Center|Torpedo Factory]] in [[Alexandria, Virginia|Alexandria]] had over 5,050.<ref>{{cite news |url= https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/an-art-center-now-alexandrias-torpedo-factory-began-life-making-weapons/2014/08/30/31a55ec0-2e0f-11e4-994d-202962a9150c_story.html |title= An art center now, Alexandria's Torpedo Factory began life making weapons |newspaper= The Washington Post |first= John |last= Kelly |date= August 30, 2014 |access-date= August 22, 2024}}</ref>