In the 1950s, Petersburg became the southern terminus of the Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike, predating the U.S. Interstate Highway System. Since that time, Petersburg has struggled in competition with nearby Richmond, as the capital has grown to dominate the region in a changing economy as industries restructured. In the late 19th and early 20th century, Virginia's Democratic Party–dominated legislature approved constitutional changes that effectively disenfranchised most blacks and many poor whites. Those disfranchised suffered major losses in the ability to exercise their rights as citizens. The legislature also instituted Jim Crow laws, including imposing racial segregation. With many African Americans having served the nation and cause of freedom in WWII, in the postwar years they pressed for social justice, an end to segregation, and restoration of voting power. In 1949 Petersburg businessman and politician, Remmie Arnold, the president and owner of the Arnold Pen Company, at the time one of the largest manufacturers of fountain pens, launched a campaign for Governor of Virginia. As a Petersburg city councilman, Arnold had pushed through a budgetary increase earmarked for equality and fair access for public housing and recreational facilities for everyone, including people of color, and increased budgetary considerations for the black schools in Petersburg. Unusually for a Democratic politician in the Jim Crow South, Arnold promised to "deal with all Virginians fairly", whatever their ethnicity. He was endorsed by Arthur Wergs Mitchell, the first African American to be elected to the United States Congress as a Democrat. Arnold ultimately lost the Democratic primary to John S. Battle, who won the gubernatorial election. Even after the Great Migration of many blacks to northern jobs and cities, Petersburg was 40 percent black in 1960. Under state segregation and Jim Crow laws, those citizens were barred from free use of public spaces and facilities. Major black churches, such as First Baptist and Gillfield Baptist, formed the moral center of the Civil Rights Movement in Petersburg, which gained strength in mid-century and was a center of action. Wyatt Tee Walker, the pastor of Gillfield Baptist Church, had become friends with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the early 1950s when they were both in divinity school in New York state. In 1957 they co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an important force for leadership of the movement in the South. Walker also founded the Petersburg Improvement Association (PIA), modeled on the Montgomery Improvement Association in Alabama. According to Walker and other close associates of King, Petersburg had played an important role, a kind of blueprint for the national civil rights movement.