User:Mitzi.humphrey/Dr. William Ferguson Reid

Dr. William Ferguson Reid (1925 - ) is a Virginia physician and civil rights activist. In 1968 he was the first African-American elected to the Virginia Assembly since the days of Reconstruction. The 90 for 90 campaign organized by Chesterfield County, Virginia Democrats in 2015 to encourage broader voter participation, especially in gerrymandered precincts, was organized in honor of his 90th birthday.

Biography
"Fergie" Reid was born in Richmond on March 18, 1925. In 1941 he graduated from Armstrong High School, and in 1946 he received his bachelor's degree from Virginia Union University. He earned his medical degree from Howard University.

Reid served three terms in the Virginia General Assembly. Afterward he was a regional medical officer for the United States Department of State. Reid was the only African American in the General Assembly when he took office in 1968. In 2000 there were fifteen.

He was a lieutenant in the United States Navy. He served with the 1st Marine Division in Korea and at the Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland. Upon his return to Richmond, he became active in civic and professional affairs.

Reid and his wife have a son who is also a physician.

Civil rights activism
Reid co-founded the Richmond Crusade for Voters in 1956. He hoped to register and mobilize black voters during Massive Resistance. He was a de facto member of the African-American Civil Rights Movement. Michael Paul Williams of the Richmond Times-Dispatch wrote that "This was an era of poll taxes, literacy tests and other mechanisms to weaken black political clout. The entrenched Byrd political machine stood in defiance of change. Reid, John Mitchell Brooks and Dr. William S. Thornton began meeting daily at the old Slaughter's Hotel, a popular segregation-era gathering place for black Richmonders in Jackson Ward. The outgrowth of these strategy sessions was the Crusade.

In honor of Reid's 90th birthday, in 2015 in Chesterfield County, Virginia, the 90 for 90 voter registration goal based on door-to-door volunteer canvassing was begun. The 90 for 90 voter outreach program spread throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Political career
A few months before Virginia's Senator Byrd died of a brain tumor, two other conservative Democrats, Representative Howard W. Smith of Virginia's Eighth District and U. S. Senator A. Willis Robertson were defeated in the primary elections. In the summer of 1969, the Democratic Party engaged in a bitterly fought gubernatorial primary and "an exhausting run-off election which left the old organization fragmented and set the stage for" the election of Linwood Holton." The first Negro to be elected to the Virginia General Assembly since 1891 took his seat in the lower chamber a year later.

W "Fergie" Ferguson Reid of Richmond won one of nine seats in the House of Delegates from Henrico County-Richmond with a total of 36,735 votes with 27,392 cast in Richmond. Virginians voted in record numbers for the second successive time in a presidential election since adoption of the 24th Amendment removing the poll tax as a bar to participation in Federal elections.

Denise Oliver Valdez in 2015 in Daily Kos asserted that "While much of the media is focusing on presidential hopefuls for 2016, the state of Virginia has key elections coming up this year—elections for the Virginia House of Delegates.... A unique effort is underway in Virginia to get voters registered and out to vote, not just this year, but in the election years to come. The impetus and inspiration behind this drive is a civil rights icon in Virginia, Dr. William Ferguson Reid, known to many as "Fergie," who was the first black man to win a seat in the Virginia General Assembly since Reconstruction.