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These two photographs show some of Virginia's first interracial jury members. In May 1867, the United States Circuit Court for the District of Virginia appointed a grand jury composed of African American and white men. The court also named African…

In 1865 David B. White, a former colonel of the New York 81st Infantry Volunteers, established the True Southerner in Hampton (later moved to Norfolk). Operating with the motto "We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created…

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…