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A joint Congressional committee was appointed in 1865 to determine whether the former Confederate states were entitled to have representation in Congress. More than one hundred witnesses testified early in 1866 about the situations in the four…

The Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution prohibits the United States government and the government of any state from denying the vote to any citizen "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." It was passed by Congress in…

Early in the morning of May 1, 1866, fires damaged several African American churches in Petersburg, including the Sunday school building adjacent to one of them. Many white Virginians feared that the schools would become hotbeds of radical…

Taken shortly after the end of the Civil War in 1865, this photograph shows a group of African Americans in front of First African Baptist Church, which had been founded in Richmond in 1841 when the white and black members of the city's First Baptist…

African Americans in several states, including Virginia, voted for the first time in the autumn of 1867. In this image, a white man is seen conducting the election. An old African American, probably a former slave and wearing patched clothes,…

The Fourteenth Amendment consists of five sections that conferred citizenship on former slaves and protected the rights of citizens from state abridgement thereof. It was passed by Congress in 1866 and ratified in 1868.

Harper's Weekly published two political cartoons by Thomas Nast, one contrasting Confederate leaders applying for a pardon that would restore their voting rights with another of a wounded African American soldier who was denied the right of suffrage.…