Browse Items (97 total)

Before the Civil War, churches often had black and white members, although they were segregated within the congregation. African American churches were required by Virginia law to have white ministers, and after the Civil War, many African Americans…

This was one of many schools that opened in Richmond after the Civil War. Men and women arrived under the auspices of northern missionary and beneficial societies to help educate the freedpeople, who had been denied education under slavery. The…

About six weeks after Virginia's General Assembly passed legislation authorizing county clerks to issue marriage licenses to African Americans, Samuel Gravely and Delia Martin married in Henry County.

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,…

This page of the official roster of the convention contains the names of twenty-three of the 105 delegates, how many days each attended during the last two months that it met, and how much payment they were due for their service.

The first page of an alphabetized list of male freed men in New Kent County recording who had formerly owned them and how much tax they owed. Under Virginia law, males older than sixteen paid an annual poll tax. At that time, payment of a poll tax…

In this detail of his lithograph celebrating the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, James Carter Beard illustrated the ability of African Americans ability to marry legally, a right they had been forbidden under slavery.

This composite photograph includes 108 of the 132 members of the House of Delegates elected for the term that met in three sessions between December 6, 1871 and April 2, 1873. Thirteen of the African American delegates are included along the bottom…

On January 1, 1866, William H. Eubank hired African Americans Bob, David, George, Patrick, Louisa, and Susan to farm his land for the ensuing year. The labor contract specified what Eubank would pay each of them and that he supplied lodging and…

P. C. Morgan's contract identifies the people he hired as he would have identified them back in slavery times, as belonging to his neighbors ("Irby's Henry, Hudson's Albert, Thomas's Ned, Peggie and Eley"). It also indicates that the hired people…