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Excerpt from Oral History Interview with Virginia Foster Durr, October 16, 1975. Interview G-0023-3. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) See Entire Interview >>

Durr protected from accusations of Communism

While many of her friends and allies became targets of anti-Communist rhetoric, Virginia's family background, her home in Seminary Hill, and Clifford's position in the Roosevelt administration all protected her from similar accusations. They also gave her room to retreat from the pressures of her growing responsibilities in Washington.

Citing this Excerpt

Oral History Interview with Virginia Foster Durr, October 16, 1975. Interview G-0023-3. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Full Text of the Excerpt

Well one of the things that saved me, in a way, from being involved in all this was that as I said, my life was lived on so many different levels. On my personal life, I lived at the Virginia Episcopal Theological Seminary. I went to the Virginia Episcopal Theological Seminary every Sunday for church. I belonged to the Ladies Auxiliary. My children played all around the grounds. These were the Virginia gentility, if you know what I mean. So my personal life was based on a neighborhood and a group of people who couldn't have been less radical in any way shape or form. And they were lovely, sweet, Christian people, but they were not engaged in any. Well, the New Deal was still a radical thing to them. And of course they had no Negroes at the Seminary, and they had no Negro students you know. So then Through Cliff being on the RFC and then on the FCC, he was always in a position to do people big favors or not do them big favors. In other words he had power, the power to give them loans or not loans, or give them a radio frequency or not a radio frequency. So that too was a protection. And then you see things were so split up.