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This plat of the grounds of Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, prepared for a lawsuit settled in 1906, shows the placement of buildings as well as the use of space for raising crops, both to feed the faculty and students and to teach…

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…

The main building for Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institution (as Virginia State University was then named) opened in 1888, five years after the school was established. It contained offices, classrooms, dormitories, a library, museum, and chapel,…

Designed by architect Richard Morris Hunt, Virginia Hall was Hampton's main building and included dormitory space, classrooms, a dining hall, and a chapel.

The American Baptist Home Mission Society opened the Richmond Theological School for Freedmen in 1865. Its first classes met in the former slave jail of Richmond trader Robert Lumpkin, where iron bars remained in the windows. It was the first…

Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute was founded in 1868 by General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, an agent of the Freedmen's Bureau. The first coeducational institution in Virginia, it prepared young men and women for careers in teaching.

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…

The American Tract Society was one of many religious and charitable organizations that contributed to the education of freedpeople during and after the Civil War. This circular quotes its mission statement: "The American Union Commission is…

Jacob Eschbach Yoder (1838-1905), a Pennsylvania native, came to Lynchburg in 1866 to help educate freedpeople. He left after a few months, but returned in 1868 and continued to teach and serve as an administrator for the African American schools in…

Virginia's public school system required racial segregation. In drawing up districts for Alexandria County (later Arlington County), the mapmaker drew what looks like a badly gerrymandered voting district with each dwelling designated as W ("white")…