Browse Items (97 total)

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.

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…

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 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,…

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.

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…

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…

Newspapers reported that about 20,000 African Americans turned out on April 3, 1866, to celebrate their emancipation in a parade from the fairgrounds to Capitol Square. Although many white Richmonders had expressed anger at the celebration, African…

In 1866 the General Assembly authorized local overseers of the poor to "bind out," or apprentice, orphaned or homeless African American children to responsible adults to raise, educate, and provide training in some useful occupation. The Virginia…

Sections of the 3166th Quartermaster Service Company, Color Guard and 3167th Quartermaster Service Company of Camp Hill, march down Jefferson Avenue, in Newport News, during a parade marking the 81st Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation.…