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"Celebration" and "Grand Celebration in Norfolk"
On January 1, 1866, the third anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, African Americans in Hampton and Norfolk celebrated their freedom with parades, speakers, a reading of the proclamation, and a feast. The True Southerner, a radical newspaper…
Position to a Lawful Celebration
In 1865 David B. White, a former colonel of the New York 81st Infantry Volunteers, established the True Southerner in Hampton (later moved to Norfolk). Operating with the motto "We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created…
Petit Jury Pool for the May 1867 session of the United States Circuit Court, District of Virginia
These two photographs show some of Virginia's first interracial jury members. In May 1867, the United States Circuit Court for the District of Virginia appointed a grand jury composed of African American and white men. The court also named African…
E. Val Putnam to Governor William Hodges Mann
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…
Copy of Ed. H. Smith to Presiding Justices, Culpeper County Court, February 2, 1866, enclosed in T. Frank P. Crandon to Presiding Justices, Louisa County, March 3, 1866
Before the Civil War, white Virginians feared slave rebellions and thus exerted repressive control over enslaved people. After the war they feared retribution by the freedpeople and in some parts of the state they attempted to disarm African…