Barack Obama campaigned in Virginia yesterday, including stops in Martinsville and Lynchburg. With his town hall meeting at E. C. Glass High School, Obama was in the 6th Congressional District of Virginia.Sometimes Valley folks think of the district as running along the I-81 corridor from Shenandoah County to Roanoke, but as you can see on the map, it extends onto the foothills to include Lynchburg. Beyond Jerry Falwell (R.I.P) and Liberty University (do they have a course on evolution?), many in the Valley are not too familiar with the "City of Seven Hills" which has about 70,000 residents, an interesting history, and vibrant economy.
The 6th District has several different media markets and you may have missed detailed coverage of Obama's town hall meeting. Check out the links:
Obama's town hall meeting at a high school named for Carter Glass brings to mind some ironies of American and Virginia history. Glass was a newspaper publisher and politician who served in House of Representatives (he was a leader in creating the Federal Reserve), as Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of the Treasury, and as a U. S. Senator. Glass was an ardent segregationist and was an influential leader in the Virginia Constitutional Convention (1901-02) that instituted a poll tax and literacy test to disenfranchise African-Americans. Glass was later a leader in the Byrd Machine that dominated state politics until the 1960s. Glass could never have envisioned the day when "his" Democratic Party would nominate an African-American to run for the highest office in the land.
It ain't your father' or grand father's Democratic Party any more! Cluck!
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