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Rae Ely was a pivotal figure in the early 1970s, leading efforts to preserve Green Springs, Virginia, from proposed developments like a state prison and a strip mine.

Image courtesy of interviewee. November 6, 2024

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The speaker reflects on their personal journey in writing about Ray Ely, a prominent figure in Virginia who fought against powerful interests threatening her rural community. The narrative begins with the speaker's move to Virginia, where they started hearing stories about Ely's significant achievements, including defeating a governor's prison project and thwarting attempts by a Fortune 500 company to mine near her home. Intrigued, the speaker conducted extensive interviews and research that revealed Ely's accomplishments were largely true, except for one exaggerated rumor regarding an attempted murder of her husband.

Ely is portrayed as a resilient woman who overcame a challenging childhood, abusive family dynamics, and educational disadvantages to become an impactful activist. Her successes in historic preservation and environmental activism highlight her use of social and environmental history in her advocacy, which resonated with national elites and helped her navigate local politics dominated by oligarchs.

The speaker emphasizes Ely's strategic approach in activism, drawing on techniques from the Civil Rights Movement to challenge local opposition effectively. Ely's remarkable charm and intelligence enabled her to connect with various stakeholders, even when she was often the only woman in influential spaces. The speaker seeks to illustrate the often-overlooked contributions of women in politics, particularly how they can influence change through methods beyond traditional, confrontational activism.

Overall, the account is both a tribute to Ely's legacy and a broader commentary on the evolving role of women in political activism, aiming to inspire readers to recognize the complexities of local politics and the significance of women's contributions to social change.

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Here are five key points from the video:

1. **Personal Connection to the Subject**: The author expresses that the writing process for this book was deeply personal, having moved to a rural area in Virginia and discovering the compelling story of Ray Ely, a local activist. The author began researching Ely after hearing various stories, many of which turned out to be true, highlighting Ely's significant impact in her community.

2. **Significance of Ray Ely's Activism**: Ray Ely is portrayed as a formidable activist who successfully fought against a powerful Virginia governor and a Fortune 500 company to protect her community and its environment. Her efforts included creating a national historical landmark district and resisting developments that could harm the local landscape.

3. **Emergence of New Historical Perspectives**: The author notes a shift in historical narrative towards inclusivity, emphasizing social and environmental history rather than solely focusing on prominent political figures. Ely's activism coincided with this change, and her use of these new approaches helped her gain support from national elites while challenging local power structures.

4. **Methodology and Oral History**: The author emphasizes the importance of oral history in researching and writing the book, alongside traditional archival research. This approach allowed for a more compelling narrative that appeals to a broader audience, contrasting it with previous scholarly work with limited readership.

5. **Influence of the Civil Rights Movement**: Ely's strategies for activism were influenced by the Civil Rights Movement. Despite her initial detachment from it, she learned to navigate local power dynamics and sought federal support to challenge local oligarchs, advocating for quality of life issues beyond just racial equality. Her story exemplifies how women can impact politics and community advocacy through diverse methods, challenging the notion that women must adopt aggressive tactics to be effective.

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Here are some key quotes extracted from the video you :

1. **On Personal Experience and Storytelling:**
- "This was more personal than anything I've ever written."
- "I realized that, you know, if she had tried to kill her husband, the last way she would do it was burning her house down."

2. **On the Protagonist and Her Background:**
- "this is a woman who came from a relatively impoverished background."
- "she was sent to foster care after she arrived, battered, in middle school, to say the least, very little education, initially."
- "she just decided that, you know, she was never, as she put it, she was never gonna be afraid again."

3. **On History and Activism:**
- "history became more than, where George Washington slept."
- "the emergence of social history, the emergence of environmental history."
- "what changed? Well, to put it simply, history became more than, where George Washington slept."

4. **On Researching and Writing the Book:**
- "oral history was gonna be very important."
- "I wanted to write a book that people would actually read."
- "I wanted to draw on some of my insights about politics, but embed those insights delicately in a compelling story."

5. **On Ray Ely's Techniques and Influence:**
- "Ray took a very different approach, but was a very, very powerful woman, and absolutely stood up for women's rights."
- "she stayed in her lane, I guess, is the term that people would use, today."
- "Ray was the only woman in almost every forum she operated in."

6. **On Influence of the Civil Rights Movement:**
- "I think she was very influenced by the Civil Rights Movement... local oligarchs, the white establishment, the white male establishment that imposed Jim Crow segregation."
- "Her greatest contribution was by the Civil Rights Movement to go around local opposition."

7. **On Reader Engagement and Lessons:**
- "I hope they'll recognize just how marginalized women were."
- "I hope that readers appreciate what it was like for quote, average women. There's nothing average about Ray."

8. **Concluding Thoughts:**
- "I have written a book in a way that, I wouldn't call a page-turner, but critics have called it a page turner."

These quotes capture the essence of the author's reflections on personal storytelling, the significance of the protagonist, the complexities of history and activism, and the broader implications of women's roles in politics and society.

X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:90000

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This was more personal than anything I've ever written.

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Um, I lived, in a rural area of Virginia.

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I I was a professor at the University of Virginia,

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and we moved out to a farm.

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Uh, and I kept hearing these stories, about this woman,

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and I assume that none of them were true.

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She lived, I guess, a couple of miles from where I did.

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I heard that she defeated a powerful

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Virginia governor when he wanted to build a prison

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across from her house.

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I heard that, she defeated Wr Grace,

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a Fortune 500 company that wanted

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to strip mine not far from her house.

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Heard that she created a national historical landmark

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district, which is, at the time,

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I think there were only a thousand such landmarks.

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Uh, this was in 1970, you know, the Alamo,

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Mount Vernon.

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Um, this was the first rural

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national historic landmark.

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Um, and, you know, I thought it was a pretty part

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of Virginia, but I, I didn't know that there was anything

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historically significant.

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I heard that she tried to kill her husband,

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by burning their house down.

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So this was just something I had

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to at least poke into a little bit.

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Uh, it turned out that everything was true except the

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last item.

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Uh, she did not, for the record,

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did not try to kill her husband.

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Um,

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and as I got to know

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the protagonist in my book a bit better, Ray Ely,

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I interviewed her 35 times.

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I realized that, you know, if she had tried

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to kill her husband, the last way she would do it was

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burning her house down,

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because if there's another protagonist in the book, it is

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that House Hawk Wood,

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which they thought was kind of in a 1920s Italian

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style house, a knockoff.

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Uh, it turned out that it was a very important piece

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of architecture built before the Civil War,

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but she didn't learn that

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until she became an activist trying to stop the prison,

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trying to stop the mining.

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And I guess the third protagonist

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of the story is history itself.

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Uh, this is a, a woman who came from a

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relatively impoverished background.

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Uh, an abusive father went to, went to,

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was sent, to foster care

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after she arrived, battered, in middle school,

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to say the least, very little education, initially.

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And she took on these battles,

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and it was actually changing conceptions of history

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that allowed her, to win some of these battles,

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or it was certainly an important ally.

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What changed? Well, to put it simply,

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history became more than, where George Washington slept.

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Uh, it, it became about,

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the environment that was very important.

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It, it became including people who are not just wealthy

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white guys, political figures, in essence,

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the emergence of social history, the emergence

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of environmental history.

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And she, she tapped into that.

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In fact, she was on the cutting edge of using that,

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and that really appealed to national elites,

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when she needed to get around the local oligarchs,

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the bad guys.

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In my story, if you will, I really just crept into this.

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I was halfway through another book

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that I had been working on a long time.

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I deferred it for two other books.

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And, you know, I said,

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I'm gonna finish this book about Gifford picture.

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And, but I realized that

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for the first time in my work,

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oral history was gonna be very important.

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And a lot of the characters that I wanted to interview,

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well, let's just say they were older than I was,

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which was pretty darn old by that time.

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And, so oral histories.

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Um, but I used also my standard research

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techniques, archival research.

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Uh, and I do think that one thing

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that is quite distinctive about the book is, yes,

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I rely on oral histories primarily to provide color.

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I wanted to, I wanted to write a book

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that people would actually read.

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Um, I, I've been a rather successful scholar,

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but I would say my audiences have been,

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between single digits

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and double digits for much of my scholarship.

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And, many of my articles

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and books, they were the right people.

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They, they were the right 12 people that read it.

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But they, they, they hard, they, they,

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they were hardly stories.

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And I, I really wanted to draw on some

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of my insights about politics,

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but embed those insights, delicately

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in a compelling story.

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And once I met Ray Ely, I realized, this is a,

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she is my story.

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Um, and so the other, the other,

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research was presidential libraries.

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Um, so lots of state archives that the, the, library

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of Virginia was really crucial.

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Uh, governors, papers,

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and lots of local newspapers,

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but also regional, I mean,

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national newspapers like the Washington Post.

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I mean, the Times, and The Post

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covered this very local story in the middle

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of nowhere in Virginia, really quite extensively.

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I think the most fundamental thing that drives Ray Ely,

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she's still very much alive, is never

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again, being dependent

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or being beholden to anybody.

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Uh, as I say, she was placed in foster care.

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She was handed off from family to family.

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Uh, eventually she was set to the Vashti School for,

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Vai Industrial School for girls in Georgia.

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She grew up in South Miami,

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in Coconut Grove section of Miami.

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Um, and somewhere along the line,

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it was actually when she was in very institutional

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foster, foster care, a really horrible

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facility by all accounts.

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Uh, she just decided that, you know, she was never,

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as she put it, she was never gonna be afraid again.

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So, where she got that ability to be a self-starter,

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where she got her intelligence, from

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where she got her, beauty from,

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she's a very attractive woman.

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Um, the, just, some of that is just natural gifts.

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Um, what made her effective, a couple of things.

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She's relentless. Uh, in the book, I tell a story about

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how, when she started,

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mobilizing against the prison,

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and then started mobilizing against wr, she said,

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we gotta buy shares of stock in W Grace.

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And, you know, she was helped by a lot of other women.

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It was primarily female activists who, stopped

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these, intrusions

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as they saw it into their neighborhood.

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She said, we gotta buy a couple shares of stock.

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And that was so she could show up at shareholder meetings.

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And she did.

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She showed up in Boston at a shareholder meeting,

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and actually, Peter Grace, the,

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I think he was the chair of the board at that time

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of WR Grace.

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Uh, Peter Grace expected her.

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He already knew about her.

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He expected her to, she expected tirade Instead, she said,

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we wanna thank you for not mining

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in the beautiful Greensboro section.

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And everybody broke into applause

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and grace.

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They planned to mine.

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I mean, she made all of that up,

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but she, she won through her.

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This was her Southern lady shtick.

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And, she established a relationship with Peter Grace,

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one that two decades later led

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to him donating the land that they were going to mine,

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to Historic Green Springs, Inc.

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Um, that's, that people were expecting.

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This was during the, the rise of second wave feminism.

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People were expecting an angry, hostile woman,

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and she could get angry, and she was very tough,

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but she often charmed people as well.

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Uh, Ray told me at one point that

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I couldn't write this book.

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I said, why? I've done a lot of research.

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I've interviewed you 20 times.

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At that point, she said, well, you don't know about fashion.

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And I mean, look at me. I don't know about fashion.

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And, and, and, and I said, no, I don't.

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But what does that have to do with, no, you know,

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I picked the right dress in the right outfit

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for the right moment each and every time.

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So one of the, one of the things the book

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contributes to in terms of the Scholar Orly literature is,

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is simply our understanding of the techniques used

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by politically powerful women.

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There's a sense that it was all about, you know,

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being angry, being tough, burning bras,

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you know, all that from the seventies,

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from the sixties and the seventies.

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Ray took a very different approach,

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but was a very, very powerful woman, and,

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and absolutely stood up for women's rights.

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She was the only woman in almost every forum she

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operated in po elected politics,

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the bureaucracy, the media.

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Um, the only place where there were a lot of other women was

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historic preservation.

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But she was a real outlier in the technique she used.

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Her battles were covered by the Washington Post

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and by the New York Times, by Time Magazine.

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Um, but she was also became a pretty popular speaker

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at universities, around the country, on how

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to stop intrusions into,

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into one's neighborhood.

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But, you know, one of the things that made her successful

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actually was a intense focus on her

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own neighborhood.

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For instance, there was a, a battle to stop,

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a nuclear power plant,

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maybe 20 miles down the road where she lived.

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She had virtually nothing to do with that.

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She didn't support a nuclear power plant,

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but she, she stayed in her lane, I guess, is the term

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that people would use, today.

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So now I'm getting back to tactics. In terms of influence.

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Um, I think that

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what, well, let me back up a little bit.

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I think that she was very influenced

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by the Civil Rights Movement, even though she was not

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a part of the Civil Rights Movement.

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And in fact, when she

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and her husband moved to, Virginia, they were happy

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to send their kids to a segregated school.

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The state funded tuition, for these white academies,

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in the 1970s when they, they arrived there.

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But what she did recognize is

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that the Civil Rights Movement beat a bunch

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of local oligarchs,

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the white establishment, the white male establishment that

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imposed Jim Crow segregation on, well,

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virtually all of the South.

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And the same men who had

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imposed segregation on

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the county she lived in Louisa County, also held

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land use very tightly.

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They made a lot of money from their influence on land use.

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And even after the schools in Louisa County

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where she lived were desegregated by federal mandate,

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the same men were in charge.

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And they did not like the idea of

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foregoing, the jobs that would come

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with the prison, the jobs that would come with mining.

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And they were, it was a very poor county,

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and they, they very much advocated

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for economic development, especially.

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They could benefit it from it.

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But they, they were the majority just as these oligarchs

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and a lot of white,

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majority white southern counties were the majority.

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So I think her greatest contribution was

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teaching people that the same techniques used

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by the Civil Rights Movement to go around local opposition,

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going to Federal allies at the time, going

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to federal courts, could be applied

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to a whole range of different issues.

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And she applied them to quality of life issues.

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I have written a book in a way that,

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people have called it a page turner.

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I wouldn't call a page turner,

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but critics have called it a page turner.

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Um, so first of all, I hope they read it.

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If they read it, I think they will,

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number one, learn a lot of lessons about how,

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as Tip O'Neill famously said, all politics is local.

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I, I think when they read this book, they'll realize

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that in many instances, no politics is just local.

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And in fact, the 1970s

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and eighties were a period in which

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the national government penetrated

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local governance in all kinds of ways

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beyond the familiar story of the Civil Rights Movement,

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that, that set of techniques for getting

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around local control extended far

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beyond just issues of, of race.

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I also hope that readers will

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come away with a different view

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of how important women were in influencing politics,

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but not just in, you know, the Jane Fonda

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kind of way.

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I hope they'll get a little bit beyond, notions

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that women could only influence politics,

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by strident in your face approaches.

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Uh, and I guess connected to that,

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I hope they'll recognize just

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how marginalized women were.

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Again, she was the only woman in the room when meeting

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with the EPA, when the Environmental Protection Agency,

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when, when meeting with the Department of Interior,

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she was the only woman in the room when she

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initiated a lot of these lawsuits.

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Uh, she was, there were a few women journalists,

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but when she started, she was Mrs.

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Hiram, b Eley. She was not Ray, she was not herself.

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She was the wife of Hiram b Eley.

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That's how the New York Times covered her.

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That's how papers covered her.

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By the time she was done, she was Ray Ely.

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And I, I, I think that, I hope that readers appreciate

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what it was like for quote, average women.

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There's nothing average about Ray,

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but, you know, middle class white women, what it was like

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to have a say in things, what it was, right, in essence,

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to have political rights,

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even though they already had the right to vote.

Unveiling a Rural Legend: The True Story of Ray Ely

00:00:00 - This was more personal than anything I've ever written. I lived, in a rural area of Virginia. I I was a professor at the University of Virginia, and we moved out to a farm. and I kept hearing these stories, about this woman, and I assume that none of them were true. She lived, I guess, a couple of miles from where I did. I heard that she defeated a powerful Virginia governor when he wanted to build a prison

00:00:32 - I heard that, she defeated Wr Grace, a Fortune 500 company that wanted to strip mine not far from her house. Heard that she created a national historical landmark district, which is, at the time, I think there were only a thousand such landmarks. this was in 1970, you know, the Alamo, Mount Vernon. this was the first rural

00:01:03 - and, you know, I thought it was a pretty part of Virginia, but I, I didn't know that there was anything historically significant. I heard that she tried to kill her husband, by burning their house down. So this was just something I had to at least poke into a little bit. it turned out that everything was true except the last item. she did not, for the record, did not try to kill her husband.

Ray Ely: An Architect of Change

00:01:34 - and as I got to know the protagonist in my book a bit better, Ray Ely, I interviewed her 35 times. I realized that, you know, if she had tried to kill her husband, the last way she would do it was burning her house down, because if there's another protagonist in the book, it is that House Hawk Wood, which they thought was kind of in a 1920s Italian

00:02:05 - it turned out that it was a very important piece of architecture built before the Civil War, but she didn't learn that until she became an activist trying to stop the prison, trying to stop the mining. And I guess the third protagonist of the story is history itself. this is a, a woman who came from a relatively impoverished background.

00:02:39 - was sent, to foster care after she arrived, battered, in middle school, to say the least, very little education, initially. And she took on these battles, and it was actually changing conceptions of history that allowed her, to win some of these battles,

Shifting Perspectives: The Evolution of Historical Narratives

00:03:08 - What changed? Well, to put it simply, history became more than, where George Washington slept. it, it became about, the environment that was very important. It, it became including people who are not just wealthy white guys, political figures, in essence, the emergence of social history, the emergence of environmental history.

00:03:39 - In fact, she was on the cutting edge of using that, and that really appealed to national elites, when she needed to get around the local oligarchs, the bad guys. In my story, if you will, I really just crept into this. I was halfway through another book that I had been working on a long time. I deferred it for two other books. And, you know, I said,

00:04:09 - And, but I realized that for the first time in my work, oral history was gonna be very important. And a lot of the characters that I wanted to interview, well, let's just say they were older than I was, which was pretty darn old by that time. And, so oral histories. but I used also my standard research techniques, archival research.

Transforming Scholarship Into Engaging Narratives

00:04:39 - that is quite distinctive about the book is, yes, I rely on oral histories primarily to provide color. I wanted to, I wanted to write a book that people would actually read. I, I've been a rather successful scholar, but I would say my audiences have been, between single digits and double digits for much of my scholarship. And, many of my articles

00:05:10 - They, they were the right 12 people that read it. But they, they, they hard, they, they, they were hardly stories. And I, I really wanted to draw on some of my insights about politics, but embed those insights, delicately in a compelling story. And once I met Ray Ely, I realized, this is a, she is my story. and so the other, the other,

00:05:42 - so lots of state archives that the, the, library of Virginia was really crucial. governors, papers, and lots of local newspapers, but also regional, I mean, national newspapers like the Washington Post. I mean, the Times, and The Post covered this very local story in the middle of nowhere in Virginia, really quite extensively. I think the most fundamental thing that drives Ray Ely,

Resilience and Empowerment: The Journey of Ray Ely

00:06:17 - again, being dependent or being beholden to anybody. as I say, she was placed in foster care. She was handed off from family to family. eventually she was set to the Vashti School for, Vai Industrial School for girls in Georgia. She grew up in South Miami, in Coconut Grove section of Miami.

00:06:50 - it was actually when she was in very institutional foster, foster care, a really horrible facility by all accounts. she just decided that, you know, she was never, as she put it, she was never gonna be afraid again. So, where she got that ability to be a self-starter, where she got her intelligence, from

00:07:21 - she's a very attractive woman. the, just, some of that is just natural gifts. what made her effective, a couple of things. She's relentless. in the book, I tell a story about how, when she started, mobilizing against the prison, and then started mobilizing against wr, she said,

Empowered Women: Strategic Activism and Unexpected Alliances

00:07:51 - And, you know, she was helped by a lot of other women. It was primarily female activists who, stopped these, intrusions as they saw it into their neighborhood. She said, we gotta buy a couple shares of stock. And that was so she could show up at shareholder meetings. And she did. She showed up in Boston at a shareholder meeting, and actually, Peter Grace, the,

00:08:22 - of WR Grace. Peter Grace expected her. He already knew about her. He expected her to, she expected tirade Instead, she said, we wanna thank you for not mining in the beautiful Greensboro section. And everybody broke into applause and grace. They planned to mine. I mean, she made all of that up,

00:08:54 - This was her Southern lady shtick. And, she established a relationship with Peter Grace, one that two decades later led to him donating the land that they were going to mine, to Historic Green Springs, Inc. that's, that people were expecting. This was during the, the rise of second wave feminism. People were expecting an angry, hostile woman,

Charm and Strategy: The Power of Ray Ely

00:09:26 - but she often charmed people as well. Ray told me at one point that I couldn't write this book. I said, why? I've done a lot of research. I've interviewed you 20 times. At that point, she said, well, you don't know about fashion. And I mean, look at me. I don't know about fashion. And, and, and, and I said, no, I don't. But what does that have to do with, no, you know,

00:09:57 - for the right moment each and every time. So one of the, one of the things the book contributes to in terms of the Scholar Orly literature is, is simply our understanding of the techniques used by politically powerful women. There's a sense that it was all about, you know, being angry, being tough, burning bras,

00:10:27 - from the sixties and the seventies. Ray took a very different approach, but was a very, very powerful woman, and, and absolutely stood up for women's rights. She was the only woman in almost every forum she operated in po elected politics, the bureaucracy, the media. the only place where there were a lot of other women was historic preservation.

Empowered Activism: A Woman's Journey Through Local Battles

00:11:00 - Her battles were covered by the Washington Post and by the New York Times, by Time Magazine. but she was also became a pretty popular speaker at universities, around the country, on how to stop intrusions into, into one's neighborhood. But, you know, one of the things that made her successful

00:11:34 - own neighborhood. For instance, there was a, a battle to stop, a nuclear power plant, maybe 20 miles down the road where she lived. She had virtually nothing to do with that. She didn't support a nuclear power plant, but she, she stayed in her lane, I guess, is the term that people would use, today.

00:12:04 - I think that what, well, let me back up a little bit. I think that she was very influenced by the Civil Rights Movement, even though she was not a part of the Civil Rights Movement. And in fact, when she and her husband moved to, Virginia, they were happy to send their kids to a segregated school.

Challenging Local Power and Economic Development

00:12:36 - in the 1970s when they, they arrived there. But what she did recognize is that the Civil Rights Movement beat a bunch of local oligarchs, the white establishment, the white male establishment that imposed Jim Crow segregation on, well,

00:13:04 - And the same men who had imposed segregation on the county she lived in Louisa County, also held land use very tightly. They made a lot of money from their influence on land use. And even after the schools in Louisa County where she lived were desegregated by federal mandate, the same men were in charge.

00:13:38 - foregoing, the jobs that would come with the prison, the jobs that would come with mining. And they were, it was a very poor county, and they, they very much advocated for economic development, especially. They could benefit it from it. But they, they were the majority just as these oligarchs and a lot of white, majority white southern counties were the majority. So I think her greatest contribution was

Beyond Local Politics: Lessons from the Civil Rights Movement

00:14:10 - by the Civil Rights Movement to go around local opposition, going to Federal allies at the time, going to federal courts, could be applied to a whole range of different issues. And she applied them to quality of life issues. I have written a book in a way that,

00:14:40 - I wouldn't call a page turner, but critics have called it a page turner. so first of all, I hope they read it. If they read it, I think they will, number one, learn a lot of lessons about how, as Tip O'Neill famously said, all politics is local. I, I think when they read this book, they'll realize that in many instances, no politics is just local.

00:15:12 - and eighties were a period in which the national government penetrated local governance in all kinds of ways beyond the familiar story of the Civil Rights Movement, that, that set of techniques for getting around local control extended far beyond just issues of, of race. I also hope that readers will

Revealing Women's Political Impact Beyond Stereotypes

00:15:49 - of how important women were in influencing politics, but not just in, you know, the Jane Fonda kind of way. I hope they'll get a little bit beyond, notions that women could only influence politics, by strident in your face approaches.

00:16:18 - I hope they'll recognize just how marginalized women were. Again, she was the only woman in the room when meeting with the EPA, when the Environmental Protection Agency, when, when meeting with the Department of Interior, she was the only woman in the room when she initiated a lot of these lawsuits. she was, there were a few women journalists,

00:16:50 - Hiram, b Eley. She was not Ray, she was not herself. She was the wife of Hiram b Eley. That's how the New York Times covered her. That's how papers covered her. By the time she was done, she was Ray Ely. And I, I, I think that, I hope that readers appreciate what it was like for quote, average women. There's nothing average about Ray,