 The Civil Rights Movement gained many participants in the 1960s . It achieved the moral force and support to gain passage of national legislation with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 . In 1964 the United States Supreme Court ordered Prince Edward County and others to integrate schools . In 1967 , the Court also struck down the state 's ban on interracial marriage with Loving v. Virginia . From 1969 to 1971 , state legislators under Governor Mills Godwin rewrote the constitution , after goals such as the repeal of Jim Crow laws had been achieved . In 1989 , Douglas Wilder became the first African American elected as governor in the United States . 
