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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,…

Taken shortly after the end of the Civil War in 1865, this photograph shows a group of African Americans in front of First African Baptist Church, which had been founded in Richmond in 1841 when the white and black members of the city's First Baptist…

Early in the morning of May 1, 1866, fires damaged several African American churches in Petersburg, including the Sunday school building adjacent to one of them. Many white Virginians feared that the schools would become hotbeds of radical…

The Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution prohibits the United States government and the government of any state from denying the vote to any citizen "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." It was passed by Congress in…

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…

Witness who testified: Harriet Belote (page 1-8), Sadie Belote (page 8-14), Mrs. George N. Wright (Pauline Belote), (page 14-17), Mrs. Brittania Stewart (page 17-21), Mrs. John Hughes (page 21-24), Lucy White (page 24-26), Mrs. Rosa Belle…

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…