In 1933 Durr moved with her husband to Washington, D.C. after Clifford was appointed legal counsel to the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and later Chief Legal Counsel to the Defense Plant Corporation. Eventually it was where they became New Dealers. It was in Washington where Virginia Durr's activism began. She met important people through her husband's New Deal contacts, some of whom changed her conservative views on civil matters. While her husband was working for the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, Durr joined the Woman's National Democratic Club. In 1938, she was one of the founding members of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare (SCHW), an interracial group working to reduce segregation and improve living conditions in the South. The group was formed in part as a response to Franklin Roosevelt's proclamation that the South was the leading economic problem in the nation.