Modern Legacy
In the more than four hundred years since her birth, Virginia Dare has become a prominent figure in American myth and folklore, representing different things to different people. A 2000 article in the Piedmont Triad, North Carolina News and Record noted that, for many Americans, particularly Southerners, she symbolizes innocence and purity, "new beginnings, promise, and hope" as well as "adventure and bravery" in a new land. She also symbolizes mystery because of her mysterious fate.
For some residents of North Carolina, she has been an important symbol of the state and the desire to keep it predominantly European-American. In the 1920s, a group that opposed suffrage for women feared that black women would get the vote. One group in Raleigh, North Carolina urged "that North Carolina remain white ... in the name of Virginia Dare." Today Virginia Dare's name is used for the anti-illegal immigration group The VDARE Project.
Some people also see her as a symbol of women's rights. In the 1980s feminists in North Carolina called for state residents to approve the Equal Rights Amendment and "Honor Virginia Dare."
There is a memorial to Virginia Dare in St Bride's Church, Fleet St, where her parents were married prior to their journey to Roanoke. The bronze sculpture, created by Clare Waterhouse in 1999, replaces a marble sculpture of Dare carved by Marjorie Meggit in 1957. The original has been missing since 1999.
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