ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, December 29, 1995 TAG: 9512290084
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: RICHMOND
TYPE: NEWS OBIT
SOURCE: Associated Press
Virginius Dabney, the Pulitzer Prize-winning editor and author of books chronicling Virginia's history, died at his home Thursday. He was 94.
Dabney was a reporter for The Richmond News Leader, a reporter and editor for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, and the author of many books on Virginia history, including ``Virginia: The New Dominion,'' ``Liberalism in the South,'' ``Richmond: The Story of a City'' and ``Pistols and Pointed Pens: The Dueling Editors of Old Virginia.''
As editor of the Times-Dispatch editorial page, Dabney won the Pulitzer in 1947.
During his 35 years in charge of the editorial page - from 1934 until 1969 - Dabney won widespread recognition as a leading Southern moderate.
He first raised an editorial voice for racial justice during a time when the white South generally chose to remain silent or ignore questions about equal rights for black citizens.
``We as Southerners are altogether too prone to let our political opinions be shaped by prejudice, on the basis of attitudes inherited from our grandfathers,'' Dabney wrote in a 1936 syndicated column.
During the 1930s and '40s, Dabney's editorials, magazine articles and books called for a federal anti-lynching law, desegregation of public transportation and repeal of the poll tax as a requirement to vote.
``Virginius Dabney was the archetypal Southern newspaper editor: honest and honorable, intelligent and literate, soft-spoken yet determined,'' said J. Stewart Bryan III, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Media General Inc. and publisher of the Times-Dispatch.
In the 1950s, when leaders of Virginia's Democratic Party advocated ``massive resistance'' - closing the state's public schools rather than integrating them - Dabney tried to provide a moderating position.
That perspective put him in conflict with D. Tennant Bryan, then publisher of Richmond Newspapers.
``Both Mr. Bryan and I had to compromise,'' Dabney said in a 1971 interview. ``I did not write some of the things he wanted me to write, and by the same token, I did write some things he did not agree with.''
In the early 1970s, Dabney produced definitive histories of Virginia and Richmond that won him accolades for their blend of scholarship and style.
His ``Virginia: The New Dominion'' was published in 1971 and ``Richmond: The Story of a City,'' in 1976.
Charles F. Bryan Jr., director of the Virginia Historical Society, said Dabney was among a select group of individuals ``who are not [trained] historians but who make very important contributions to history.'' ``One hundred years from now, Vee Dabney will be remembered as a force in Virginia history. He was part of an old tradition of gentleman scholars, people not formally trained in history, yet who produced thorough and well-written interpretations of the past,'' Bryan said.
Born in 1901 at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Dabney was the son of a history professor and was named for his grandfather.
A funeral will be held Saturday at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Richmond. Burial will be in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond.
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshot) Dabney. color.by CNB