The Poff Federal Building in Roanoke will be renamed after the late Roanoke civil rights lawyer Reuben Lawson.
The Senate on Wednesday passed and sent to President Joe Biden the Water Resources Development Act of 2024. Tucked in that measure was a provision to rename the federal building in Roanoke, removing the name of the former Republican congressman Richard Poff and instead christening the building the Reuben E. Lawson Federal Building.
The action culminates a two-year campaign initiated by former U.S. Attorney John Fishwick of Roanoke to honor Lawson, a Black attorney who was involved in the most prominent integration cases in the western part of Virginia.
Fishwick has called Lawson a “forgotten legal titan” who has been overlooked because he died young, at age 43, in 1963.
In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 ruling that struck down segregated schools, Virginia responded with a policy known as Massive Resistance. Lawson went to court in Floyd County, in Grayson County, in Lynchburg, in Pulaski County, in Roanoke, in Roanoke County to force the school systems to integrate — and eventually won them all.
He also figured in a case of national importance. In 1961, the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Baltimore Colts played a preseason game in Roanoke’s Victory Stadium (at a time when there were no NFL teams between Washington and Dallas, so the league often played preseason games in the South). Virginia law at the time required that seating be segregated. The Roanoke NAACP — which Lawson represented — filed suit but it sat in court, unheard. With the game approaching, the NAACP tried another tack: It sent telegrams to all the Black players and asked them to boycott the game if Victory Stadium wasn’t integrated. That precipitated a crisis that went all the way to the NFL’s new commissioner, Pete Rozelle. In the end, Roanoke agreed to look the other way and ignore state law, and the NFL never again played before a segregated crowd.
Two years later, Lawson was dead from longstanding health problems.
In October 2022, Fishwick proposed that the Poff Federal Building be renamed after Lawson. Poff was a Radford Republican who was elected to Congress in 1952 and is considered one of the authors of the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that creates a mechanism to remove a president who is incapacitated. Poff was once considered for the U.S. Supreme Court and later served on the Virginia Supreme Court.
Fishwick said in launching his drive to rename the Roanoke courthouse: “While Mr. Poff should be commended for his service as a member of the armed forces, Congressman, and Justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia, it is an unfortunate historical fact that Mr. Poff signed the Declaration of Constitutional Principles, known informally as the Southern Manifesto, in opposition to racial integration of public places, and voted against the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960, 1964, and 1968, as well as the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Finally, as noted above, the Federal Building was completed in 1975. As we are nearing the 50th anniversary of the Federal Building, the time is ripe to change its namesake.”
The Senate passed the water bill, with the Poff provision included, in August. Last week, the U.S. House passed the measure on a vote of 399-18 and sent it back to the Senate with some changes. On Wednesday, the Senate agreed to those changes so the bill now goes to the president for his signature, which is expected.
Overall, the bill was not controversial. In the House, the only Virginia representative to oppose the water bill was Rep. Bob Good, R-Prince Edward County.
Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, both D-Va., had championed the name change. In a joint statement Wednesday, they said: “We are especially pleased that this bill will honor civil rights attorney Reuben Lawson’s legacy of social justice by renaming the federal building in Roanoke in his memory.”