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Jacob Eschbach Yoder (1838-1905), a Pennsylvania native, came to Lynchburg in 1866 to help educate freedpeople. He left after a few months, but returned in 1868 and continued to teach and serve as an administrator for the African American schools in…

In May 1863, U.S. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton issued General Order No. 143 creating the Bureau of U. S. Colored Troops. Almost 200,000 African Americans served in the United States Colored Troops during the last two years of the Civil War.

In this detail of his lithograph celebrating the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, James Carter Beard illustrated the ability of African Americans families to live together without facing the threat of separation as had been the case under…

In this detail of his lithograph celebrating the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, James Carter Beard illustrated the ability of African Americans ability to marry legally, a right they had been forbidden under slavery.

In this detail of his lithograph celebrating the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, James Carter Beard illustrated the ability that the freedpeople had to control their own labor and acquire their own land after emancipation.

In this detail of his lithograph celebrating the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, James Carter Beard illustrated the ability of African Americans to take the pulpit and pastor churches in the South, where they had long been denied that right…

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.

In addition to teaching freed men, women, and children to read and write, northern missionary and relief associations also established industrial schools for adults to help African Americans achieve self-sufficiency in the new free labor market.

This was one of many schools that opened in Richmond after the Civil War. Men and women arrived under the auspices of northern missionary and beneficial societies to help educate the freedpeople, who had been denied education under slavery. The…