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African American Methodists in Portsmouth constructed their own church in 1857. The building was used by escaping slaves as part of the Underground Railroad. Required by Virginia law to have a white minister, the congregation called its first African…

Founded in 1868, Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute educated and trained hundreds of African Americans to be teachers. Although African Americans had been denied the opportunity for education during slavery, Hampton required its students (ages…

After slavery, African Americans controlled their own labor and by the end of the nineteenth century more African Americans owned their own farms in Virginia than in any other state.

A few days before holding an Emancipation Proclamation celebration in October 1890, Richmond residents debated what should be the proper date for commemorating the abolition of slavery.

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…

In 1882, the Virginia General Assembly, which then included thirteen African American members, created the Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute, the nation's first fully state-supported four-year institution of higher learning for African…

Virginia's General Assembly passed an act to create the state's first public school system on July 11, 1870. Section 47 of the act required that "white and colored persons shall not be taught in the same school, but in separate schools, under the…