The VLW Blog

Veterans of the civil rights battles of Virginia recalled the fight as they honored the memory of attorney Oliver W. Hill on the sunny front lawn of Hill’s boyhood home this afternoon.
The house in Roanoke’s Gainsboro community, renovated through the efforts of Hill’s admirers who founded the Oliver White Hill Foundation, will house a legal [...]

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The Virginia Organizing Project is working to restore voting rights for felons who have served their time, according to the C-Ville Weekly.  One of the activists pushing for legislative reform says, under current law, an application for restoration of civil rights can be derailed by a simple speeding ticket.
Posted by Peter Vieth

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Sparked by two recent accounts of intimidation, some Shenandoah Valley legislators are considering whether the display of a hangman’s noose should be categorized as a hate crime in the Virginia code.
According to this account in the Daily News Record, most Harrisonburg-area lawmakers would favor the change.
The paper reports that the EEOC is looking into complaints [...]

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Williams Mullen partner Robert C. Nusbaum of Norfolk was honored this week for 60 years of service to his clients.
As reported by The Virginian-Pilot, his colleagues showered the 84-year-old Nusbaum with accolades.
“He’s unwavering,” said Howard Gordon, a partner who has worked with Nusbaum for 35 years. “When he takes a position or gets involved in [...]

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When a liquor license is granted, the bar or restaurant agrees to let ABC agents come on the premises to inspect for violations.
But apparently something else was going on June 2, 2004, when a police narcotics task force in Manassas Park invaded the Rack ‘N’ Roll Billiard Club with over 50 officers.
According to the [...]

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Challenging the government is not working out very well for Robert Steinburg. In 2005, he was tossed out of a Chesterfield County Planning Commission meeting and charged with disorderly conduct after a heated exchange with a commission member. His civil rights suit against the commission was tossed out by federal district Judge Robert [...]

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We don’t know why, exactly, but WTVR has posted the FBI file on the late civil rights lawyer Oliver Hill. There are seven parts. Viewed from present-day perspective, unsurprisingly, the documents say more about the agency than the subject of its inquiries.

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A tourism PR director who says he was fired for sending e-mails to various state officials cannot sue those officials for his termination, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said yesterday in ruling on the director’s civil rights suit.
Public relations director L. Meriwether German worked for the Shenandoah Valley Travel Association, a private non-profit [...]

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Retired Richmond civil rights lawyer Oliver W. Hill Sr. died this morning at the age of 100, reports The Associated Press.
Mr. Hill was one of the lawyers in the 1954 landmark decision, Brown v. Board of Education. He and his colleague Spotswood W. Robinson represented black students from Prince Edward County. Mr. Hill’s law [...]

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