Southwest Virginia Civil Rights Leader Nannie Berger Hairston: An Oral History

Nannie Berger Hairston was a crusader for justice in twentieth-century Virginia.

Nannie Berger Hairston was born in West Virginia in 1921, half a century after the end of the Civil War. She attended segregated schools, graduated, married and started a family. When Nannie’s husband, John, lost his job in the coal mine, the Hairstons moved to Southwest Virginia. It was the height of Jim Crow, and yet, against great odds, she and John became leaders in the community, advocating for civil rights and social justice. Nannie Hairston’s advice was sought by the powerless as well as the powerful. At the time of her death in 2017, she had taken her place as an icon for truth, justice and love.

Local author Sheree Scarborough uses Nannie Hairston’s own words to tell her story.

Sheree Scarborough is an oral historian with thirty years of experience cocreating oral histories and directing oral history projects. She is the author of African American Railroad Workers of Roanoke: Oral Histories of the Norfolk & Western, based on her interviews with railroad workers. She holds a master’s degree and is a doctoral candidate in American studies from the University of Texas, where she was an oral historian for the Briscoe Center for American History. She has worked as an oral historian for the Library of Congress, the National Institutes of Health, NASA/Johnson Space Center, the University of Virginia, the Historical Society of Western Virginia and the National Museum of Women in the Arts.