Like many white Southerners, white Virginians feared that African American support would lead to Radical Republican domination in state politics. Hostile whites described African American voters as easily manipulated by unscrupulous northerners…
For decades after the Civil War African Americans searched for family members who had been separated by the domestic slave trade. In 1882, Jennie Brown, of Corinth, Mississippi, wrote to the sheriff of Mecklenburg County, Virginia, to ask about…
A former slave in Southampton County, John Brown emerged as a leader among the freedpeople there after the Civil War. As a candidate for the convention called in 1867 to write a new state constitution as required by federal law, he had ballots like…
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…
In April 1867, African Americans in Richmond organized protests against the privately operated company that refused to allow them to ride its horse-drawn streetcars. Christopher Jones had tried to board a streetcar and was arrested for disturbing the…
The Seabrook Warehouse did not burn in Richmond's evacuation fire and reopened in June 1865. About two-dozen freedmen were employed at the warehouse at the time.