Virginia Christian's case drew national attention. Governor Mann received numerous letters from Chicago requesting clemency for Christian including this telegram from E. Val Putnam, editor of the socialist newspaper Chicago Daily World, dated…
In this detail of his lithograph celebrating the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, James Carter Beard illustrated the importance of education to African Americans, who had been denied such opportunities under slavery.
Thomas Nast drew these scenes as illustrations for Harper's Weekly on January 24, 1863, three weeks after Abraham Lincoln signed his Emancipation Proclamation. This later lithograph was a slightly altered depiction with a portrait of Lincoln in the…
Standing near the entrance to Hampton University, the Emancipation Oak was the site of Mary Peake's first classroom for the many African Americans who escaped slavery to freedom at Fort Monroe in 1861. In 1863 African Americans gathered there to hear…