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Engravings to accompany article

Engravings of African American men

Throughout the Civil War thousands of enslaved men, women, and children attained their freedom by seeking refuge with United States troops as they moved across Virginia. They were declared "contraband of war" in May 1861 and Freedmen's Villages grew…

Text and engravings of slave trade in District of Columbia and northern Virginia

Enslaved women, men, and children waiting to be sold at auction

In April 1868, James B. Carter, an African American member of the constitutional convention, purchased a lot at the corner of Thirteenth and Hull Streets in the town of Manchester and opened a grocery store in partnership with Richard Smith. It's…

For decades, Virginia localities kept separate registers for African American and white voters. These registers are for Southampton County and record the African Americans and whites who voted at the first precinct of the second magisterial district…

Like many white Southerners, white Virginians feared that African American support would lead to Radical Republican domination in state politics. Hostile whites described African American voters as easily manipulated by unscrupulous northerners…