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The Fourteenth Amendment consists of five sections that conferred citizenship on former slaves and protected the rights of citizens from state abridgement thereof. It was passed by Congress in 1866 and ratified in 1868.

While the convention called to rewrite Virginia's constitution was meeting, a large gathering of white men organized the Conservative Party on December 11

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…

On October 22, 1867, African American men voted in Virginia for the first time. The army officers who conducted the election recorded the votes of white and black men on separate lists, and in King George County (and likely in other counties as well)…

This printed broadside was circulated in Caroline County to notify men where and how to register to vote prior to the election for convention delegates in 1867, the first in which African American men were able to vote.

In the spring of 1867, Congress passed an act that required the former Confederate states to hold conventions, in which African Americans were eligible to serve, and to write new state constitutions. In Virginia, African Americans, former Unionists,…

African Americans in several states, including Virginia, voted for the first time in the autumn of 1867. In this image, a white man is seen conducting the election. An old African American, probably a former slave and wearing patched clothes,…

During the summer of 1865, the Secretary of the Commonwealth issued instructions to commissioners of election in the counties that had not been part of the loyal Restored government of Virginia. He advised registrars that by an act of General…

Virginia's Attorney General Thomas R. Bowden, a Unionist Republican, published his opinion during July 1865 in response to questions about who was eligible to hold office in the state. He specified that any person who had held office under the…

Virginia's Attorney General Thomas R. Bowden, a Unionist Republican, published his opinion during July 1865 in response to questions about who could vote in the state's upcoming election. He specified that white men over age twenty-one could vote…