Raymond “R.R.” Wilkinson, one of 11 children, grew up on his family’s farm in Amelia County. After serving in the Navy during World War II, he attended Virginia Union University, where he earned degrees in education (1952) and divinity (1955). In 1958, Wilkinson became pastor of Roanoke’s Hill Street Baptist Church—a position he held for more than 30 years. Wilkinson served as president of the Roanoke Branch of the NAACP from 1959 to 1968, during which he fought the segregation of public spaces in the city and job discrimination in local government and business. Despite threats to his safety, Wilkinson never stopped advocating for civil rights. A powerful orator, he successfully fought white city leaders to close a city dump located in a black neighborhood, and later protested urban renewal efforts that destroyed black communities. Wilkinson was awarded an honorary Doctor of Divinity from Virginia Theological Seminary, and the Roanoke Branch of the NAACP named its annual award for social justice in his honor. In 2021, The R.R. Wilkinson Foundation was established to promote awareness of Roanoke’s civil rights movement, and in 2023, the city named a street for Wilkinson near the site of the former dump in Washington Park.
2023 Strong Men and Women in Virginia History honoree, Library of Virginia and Dominion Energy.
Growing up on her family’s Appomattox County farm, Ora Scruggs McCoy learned the value of hard work, integrity, and service to others. After graduating from Carver-Price High School, McCoy attended community college and joined the local post office. In 1975, she was appointed postmaster for Appomattox County, a position she held until retiring in 2002. On her family farm, she employs conservation measures to enhance the health and productivity of the land and forest. In 2021, McCoy was recognized as Farmer of the Year in Virginia by the National Resources Conservation Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. McCoy served on the county’s school board from 1986 to 1994, led the Appomattox Voters League, and raised money for a community center. From 2004 to 2012, McCoy served on the Board of Historic Resources for the Commonwealth of Virginia. During the Civil War Sesquicentennial, McCoy was instrumental in incorporating black history into local commemoration events and shared her family’s 50-pound iron bell, which had been owned by her enslaved great-grandparents, for National Park Service ceremonies. Currently, McCoy chairs the board of the Carver-Price Legacy Museum, which oversees the historical preservation of the school.
Alexandria native Samuel Wilbert Tucker (June 18, 1913−October 19, 1990) read law with a local attorney after earning a B.A. from Howard University in 1933, and was admitted to the Virginia bar a year later. In August 1939 he organized at the Alexandria Public Library one of the earliest sit-ins in the struggle for equal rights. He filed a lawsuit to end segregation there, but the city built a separate library for African Americans instead. After serving as a major with a segregated unit during World War II, Tucker relocated to Emporia, where he opened a law practice. By the mid-1960s he was a partner in the Richmond law firm of Hill, Tucker, and Marsh, which specialized in civil rights cases. As the Virginia NAACP's (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) lead attorney for decades, Tucker tried scores of discrimination and segregation cases related to schools, teacher pay, and jury selection before local, state, and federal courts.
Tucker sat on legal teams that litigated to reopen Prince Edward County's public schools when they closed rather than desegregate after Brown v. Board of Education (1954), as well as to end tuition subsidies for white students to attend private academies. He argued the landmark case Green v. New Kent County School Board, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1968 that local school boards must immediately implement desegregation strategies. Tucker's continual battles for equal justice led to an unsuccessful attempt by white lawyers to disbar him early in the 1960s. He later received many accolades for his work, including a lifetime service award from the Virginia Commission on Women and Minorities in the Legal System.
2022 Strong Men & Women in Virginia History honoree, Library of Virginia and Dominion Energy.
The son of formerly enslaved parents in North Carolina, Beatrice Henry Hester (August 31, 1895–February 13, 1972) graduated from Biddle University (later Johnson C. Smith University), in Charlotte, North Carolina, before earning a divinity degree in 1921 from Virginia Union University, in Richmond. He accepted a call from Shiloh Baptist Church (Old Site), in Fredericksburg, and became its pastor shortly after his ordination in May 1922. An advocate for education and social justice, Rev. B. H. Hester organized evening literacy classes at Shiloh for adults so they could register to vote. For about a decade he taught and served as principal at Fredericksburg Normal and Industrial Institute (also known as Mayfield High School), a high school for African-American students who had few options locally beyond elementary school. He helped stabilize its finances and increased enrollment before the institute later became part of the local public school system.
A courageous pastor who challenged white supremacy despite potential danger to his family and church, Hester established the weekly Shiloh Herald in 1925 with the motto, "For all things beneficial and uplifting; against all things injurious and detrimental; neutral on nothing." In scathing editorials he excoriated white leaders over voter suppression, lack of educational opportunities, and violence against African Americans in Virginia and nationwide. He called out the Richmond News Leader for its use of offensive language and secured a promise from its editor that certain words would no longer appear in the newspaper. Locally, he opposed city practices that discriminated against Black Fredericksburg residents. Unwilling to accept an unjust society, Hester fought segregation and discrimination while empowering his congregation to do likewise. Despite his humble beginning, Hester's example continues to endure.
Nominated by Xavier R. Richardson, Spotsylvania County.
2022 Strong Men & Women in Virginia History honoree, Library of Virginia and Dominion Energy.
Growing up in Lynchburg, Evelyn Reid (June 3, 1926–March 14, 2000) absorbed her mother's message of service to others. She graduated from Virginia Union University in 1948 and began teaching. In 1951, she moved to Arlington County, where she continued to teach while earning a master's degree in early childhood education from New York University. In 1956, she married Archie D. Syphax, a firefighter whose family had a long history of public service in Arlington.
When Evelyn Syphax could not find a preschool in segregated Arlington that would accept her son, she established the Syphax Child Care Center in 1963. She offered a high quality education while emphasizing respect for each child and his or her culture and ethnicity. She also taught and served as a reading specialist in the county's public schools until retiring in 1972. In 1980, Syphax began a four-year term on the Arlington School Board, where she advocated a program to improve the reading, writing, and math skills of underachieving elementary students.
A champion for children and women, Syphax organized a local Alpha Kappa Alpha chapter to provide scholarships and mentoring programs. She also established a local chapter of the Coalition of 100 Black Women to improve the social and political status of Black women. Syphax also believed in documenting African-American history, helping to lead the fight for a state historic marker at the site of the Freedmen's Village and creating the Black Heritage Museum of Arlington. In 2010, Virginia Union University named its School of Education for Evelyn Reid Syphax.
2021 Strong Men and Women in Virginia History honoree, Library of Virginia and Dominion Energy.
Fannie Beatrice Wilkinson Fitzgerald (July 27, 1930–April 7, 2016) grew up in Amelia County, the youngest of 11 children. Her parents stressed the importance of both religion and education, laying a strong foundation on which Fitzgerald built an inspiring 35-year career. She earned her bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Virginia Union University in 1953 and began teaching in a sparsely resourced, two-room schoolhouse. After a few years, she applied to graduate programs in Virginia, but was barred from entry because she was African American. Undeterred, she studied at Columbia University, in New York, receiving her master’s degree in special education in 1960. During this time, she also taught at two segregated schools in Prince William County.
Although the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education outlawed segregated schooling in 1954, many Virginia politicians pushed back against the decision with a program of Massive Resistance that led to school closings in some jurisdictions. Amid this volatile context, Fitzgerald and three other African-American teachers, known as the “Courageous Four,” were selected in 1965 to pioneer desegregation in Prince William. They were transferred from all-black schools to teach at white schools and thus helped accomplish the school system’s complete desegregation by September 1966. When asked about this time, Fitzgerald replied, “Children are children. It doesn’t matter what color they are.” In addition to serving as a fourth-grade teacher and a learning disabilities specialist, she was also a supervisor for both integration and special needs programs. In 2008 a Dale City elementary school was named in her honor.
2019 Strong Men & Women in Virginia History honoree, Library of Virginia and Dominion Energy.
2019 Strong Men & Women in Virginia History honoree, Library of Virginia and Dominion Energy.
Andrew Jackson White Sr. was born in rural King and Queen County and attended local segregated schools. In 1953 he received a bachelor’s degree at Virginia Union University in Richmond, and went on to earn divinity degrees from Virginia Union’s School of Theology. White taught history and social studies in Westmoreland County.
Ordained a Baptist minister in 1953, he served a Northumberland County church before becoming pastor of Petersburg’s Zion Baptist Church in 1963. In 1969 White helped found the interracial Downtown Churches United, which worked with other community groups to provide food, clothing, shelter, and job assistance. White fought for adoption of the federal food stamp program for low-income families, which the city council approved in 1970. Concerned about access to health care, he sat on the board of the Southside Mental Health Association, serving as its first African-American president, and was a member of the Petersburg Hospital Authority, which oversaw the construction of a new facility. He was secretary of the board of trustees for the Virginia Negro Baptist Children’s Home and a vice president of the Dinwiddie County–based Titmus Foundation, supporting educational and religious organizations. He co-chaired the successful capital campaign to construct a new public library in Petersburg that opened in 2014.
White retired as Zion’s pastor in 2011. He served concurrently as pastor of Union Branch Baptist Church in nearby Prince George County, and in 2015 the church dedicated a community center named for him.
Nominated by Ann C. Taylor, Petersburg.2019 Strong Men & Women in Virginia History honoree, Library of Virginia and Dominion Energy.