Ken Mitchell embodies our best history
Since our founding, the United States has struggled to resolve competing visions
The bold aspirations of equality in the Declaration of Independence?
Western Virginia — including what is now the Sixth Congressional District — has a mostly forgotten history of choosing the right side in this long struggle. We have not always made the right choice. Can we live up to our best history now?
Or an unequal society authorized by a Constitution that accepted slavery?
Trumpism and Project 2025 are the latest round in this ongoing struggle
What can we learn from our history?
Uncover the the Christian Confederate roots of Project 2025
Who were the Readjusters in Western Virginia?
AFTER THE CIVIL WAR, the region that now includes the Sixth Congressional District showed a way forward. The Readjuster Movement — led by Harrison H. Riddleberger of Woodstock, an attorney, and William Mahone, a former Confederate general, working across party and racial lines, did not last long, but it is worth revisiting now.
“In this brief time [late 1870s-early 1880s], the Readjusters abolished the poll tax, ended the whipping post, funded thousands of public schools (new and reopened), mandated equal pay for White and Black schoolteachers, built key infrastructure, and refinanced the debt (paying less per year and also making West Virginia pay a fair share of it). Corporations and the wealthy paid a larger share in taxes. The Readjusters also allocated more funding to the new public Virginia Polytechnic Institute (Virginia Tech) and founded Virginia State University (a key historically Black college in Ettrick)…
This history is largely unknown to us, but we should be proud of it. Our cities, our communities, became a realization of the American experiment. Liberty and justice for all must be expressed through politics, economic opportunity and in the social sphere.”
Teach our history: The hopeful legacy of Virginia’s Readjusters
Do you trust Ben Cline or Ken Mitchell to revive our honorable history of an inclusive fair society for the current century?
The Challenges Then…
After the Civil War, Virginia faced massive debt from pre-war borrowing, accrued interest, and the burden of rebuilding while integrating those recently emancipated into society and the economy. What is now the Sixth Congressional District played a crucial role in the Readjuster Party — one of the most radical reforming parties in Virginia history. The Readjuster Party brought together a coalition of white farmers, working men and freed slaves, Democrats, Republicans, and African Americans demanding investment in public schools and roads. The party dominated in Richmond and sent seven members to Congress. The party was brought to an end when those uncomfortable with its egalitarianism and racial integration used race to drive apart the coalition.
Is It Time for a New Readjustor Movement?
Tax reductions for the wealthy and corporations or roads, schools, and broadband for the people of the Sixth District? New forms of white dominance or a Twenty-First-Century globally diverse society? A government that helps regulate the excesses of corporations driven only by profit or a government in the hands of those with money, and heaven help everyone else? The questions today are not unlike those in the 1870s.
Let us follow the lead of the Readjusters from the Valley.
Let us send people to Washington who understand that the government elected by the people is there to ensure our common good, our freedoms, and our longing to live up to the highest aspirations of our Founding Fathers.