NORFOLK, Va. — The story of a Norfolk civil rights trailblazer is now forever memorialized at the corner of Brambleton and Church streets.
“It’s a story that should be told more and more and more," Dr. Eric Claville said, Director at Norfolk State University's Center for African American Public Policy.
Monday, city leaders erected a historical marker beside the Martin Luther King Jr. monument of Evelyn Thomas Butts: a Norfolk-born civil rights activist who fought to secure African American voting rights in the 1960s.
United States Congressman Bobby Scott, Norfolk Mayor Kenneth Alexander, and City Councilwoman Andria McClellan were some of the leaders in attendance.
“We know the notable civil rights leaders, but there are many people that worked locally," Dr. Claville said.
In 1963, Evelyn Butts initiated a federal lawsuit to eliminate Virginia's poll tax. Three years later, the Supreme Court ruled the tax a violation of the U.S. Constitution.
“When you file lawsuits against a policy in your community and state, you don’t make a lot of friends," Dr. Claville said, "to come from humble beginnings, to say I 'want to challenge this in the highest court of the land.'”
Evelyn Butts is one of 20 African American Virginians honored in the Black History Month Historical Marker Contest, in partnership with the Department of Historical Resources and the Virginia State Highway Marker programs.
The historical marker reads:
Evelyn Butts, civil rights activist and community organizer, worked to secure voting rights for African Americans. In 1963 she initiated a federal lawsuit asserting that Virginia’s poll tax, which citizens had to pay before they could register to vote, violated the U.S. Constitution. The case, combined with a similar suit filed in Fairfax County, reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections (1966) that the poll tax requirement in state elections was unconstitutional. Butts conducted voter registration drives and helped establish Concerned Citizens of Norfolk, which resulted in the election of African Americans to public office.
Editors Note: The video below is on file from March 5, 2021