William Ferguson Reid

Biography

Reid was born in Richmond on March 18, 1925, the son of Leon Reid, a dentist, and his wife. He grew up in a house directly adjacent to that of Maggie L. Walker at 110 Leigh Street in Richmond's Jackson Ward. The two houses for some reason had the same street number, and one day "a courtly man with a Van Dyke beard" appeared at his family's door, mistaking it for the Walker residence. The stranger was scholar and civil rights activist W. E. B. Du Bois. Reid was 9 years old when Maggie L. Walker, whose monument was placed on Broad Street in 2017, died in 1934. He remembers her vividly, "She was widowed and living with her children and grandchildren . . . . Naturally we were together every day in our house or their house; so we were very close." He recalls the names of the Walker grandchildren: "Maggie, Laura, Armstead, Mamie Evelyn and Elizabeth," who was his age.

In 1941 he graduated from Armstrong High School, and in 1946 he received his bachelor's degree from Virginia Union University. He earned his medical degree from Howard University. Reid served three terms in the Virginia General Assembly. Afterward he was a regional medical officer for the United States Department of State. Reid was the only African American in the General Assembly when he took office in 1968. In 2000 there were fifteen.

He was a lieutenant in the United States Navy. He served with the 1st Marine Division in Korea and at the Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland. Upon his return to Richmond, he became active in civic and professional affairs. Reid and his wife, who reside in Chevy Chase, Maryland, have a son, William Ferguson Reid, Jr., of Hollywood, California, who is also a physician.

Civil rights activism

Reid co-founded the Richmond Crusade for Voters in 1956. He hoped to register and mobilize black voters during Massive Resistance. He was a de facto member of the Civil Rights Movement. Harry F. Byrd Sr. and his Democratic political machine in Virginia largely controlled statewide politics. Michael Paul Williams of the Richmond Times-Dispatch wrote that "This was an era of poll taxes, literacy tests and other mechanisms to weaken black political clout. The entrenched Byrd political machine stood in defiance of change."

Reid, John Mitchell Brooks and Dr. William S. Thornton began meeting daily at the old Slaughter's Hotel, a popular segregation-era gathering place for black Richmonders in Jackson Ward. The outgrowth of these strategy sessions was the Crusade. Virginia Commonwealth University's Cabell Library has in its VCU Digital Libraries Collection "Voices of Freedom: videotaped oral histories of leaders of the Civil Rights movement in Virginia" an interview with Reid in both audio and text format.

African Americans gained national support with the Civil Rights Movement through the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. An important outcome was Federal oversight and enforcement of voting rights. Under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, decisions affecting elections became subject to clearance by the U.S. Department of Justice.

In honor of Reid's 90th birthday, in 2015 in Chesterfield County, Virginia, the 90 for 90 voter registration goal based on door-to-door volunteer canvassing began. The 90 for 90 voter outreach program spread throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia and beyond.

Political career

A few months before Virginia's Senator Byrd died of a brain tumor, two other conservative Democrats, Representative Howard W. Smith of Virginia's Eighth District and U. S. Senator A. Willis Robertson, were defeated in the primary elections. In the summer of 1969, the Democratic Party engaged in a bitterly fought gubernatorial primary and "an exhausting run-off election which left the old organization fragmented and set the stage for "the election of Linwood Holton." The first African American to be elected to the Virginia General Assembly since 1891, Reid took his seat in the lower chamber a year later.

Reid won one of nine seats in the House of Delegates from Henrico County-Richmond with a total of 36,735 votes with 27,392 cast in Richmond. Virginians voted in record numbers for the second successive time in a presidential election since adoption of the 24th Amendment removing the poll tax as a bar to participation in Federal elections.

In 2015, Denise Oliver Valdez wrote for Daily Kos that "While much of the media is focusing on presidential hopefuls for 2016, the state of Virginia has key elections coming up this year—elections for the Virginia House of Delegates.... A unique effort is underway in Virginia to get voters registered and out to vote, not just this year, but in the election years to come. The impetus and inspiration behind this drive is a civil rights icon in Virginia, Dr. William Ferguson Reid, known to many as 'Fergie,' who was the first black man to win a seat in the Virginia General Assembly since Reconstruction."