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Early in the 1880s African Americans held public offices in the city of Danville. During this time, a biracial coalition known as the Readjuster Party had won control of the General Assembly and the statewide offices. A circular letter published with…

For decades after the Civil War African Americans searched for family members who had been separated by the domestic slave trade. In 1865 Stephen Flemming, who had been sold from Bowling Green, Virginia, to Louisiana about 1849, wrote Governor…

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.

Mary Peake began teaching contraband at Fort Monroe in the autumn of 1861. Two years later, General Benjamin F. Butler had this school constructed and it remained under military control until 1865, when the American Missionary Association began…