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Standing near the entrance to Hampton University, the Emancipation Oak was the site of Mary Peake's first classroom for the many African Americans who escaped slavery to freedom at Fort Monroe in 1861. In 1863 African Americans gathered there to hear…

The Thirteenth Amendment formally abolished slavery in the United States.

Thomas Nast drew these scenes as illustrations for Harper's Weekly on January 24, 1863, three weeks after Abraham Lincoln signed his Emancipation Proclamation. This later lithograph was a slightly altered depiction with a portrait of Lincoln in the…

Brigadier General Robert Huston Milroy (1816–1890), commanding the United States Army units then posted in Winchester, pronounced the Emancipation Proclamation in effect, thereby freeing all enslaved Virginians in Winchester and Frederick…

African Americans cheered as Abraham Lincoln toured the city of Richmond a day after it had been liberated by the United States Army in April 1865.

Newspapers reported that about 20,000 African Americans turned out on April 3, 1866, to celebrate their emancipation in a parade from the fairgrounds to Capitol Square. Although many white Richmonders had expressed anger at the celebration, African…

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…

Seeking to establish a self-defined "National Thanksgiving Day for Freedom," African Americans sponsored a three-day Colored People's Celebration, held in Richmond, in October 1890.

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.

In 1905 African Americans in Richmond celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the end of slavery.