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Peter Jacob Carter won election to the House of Delegates in 1871 to represent Northampton County. He served eight consecutive years and became a leader in the Republican Party.

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…

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…

This 1869 lithograph from the Richmond studio of lithographer Charles Ludwig illustrated one fear that white Virginians entertained after the Civil War, that unscrupulous politicians would use government jobs in the post office or federal customs…

The Republican slate of candidates in 1869 included the current governor Henry Horatio Wells, the current attorney general Thomas Russell Bowden, and an African American physician, Joseph Dennis Harris, for lieutenant governor. In the election, the…

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…

Opponents of the constitution produced this political broadside to frighten white Virginians into voting against ratification of the constitution by spreading fears that African Americans would be able to beat white children in the new public schools…

Virginia's constitutional convention met in Richmond from December 3, 1867 until April 17, 1868. Twenty-four of the delegates were African Americans, four of whom are identified in this image: Willis A. Hodges, of Princess Anne County; Lewis Lindsey…

Raleigh Travers Daniel was an attorney who helped establish the Conservative Party in 1867. He served as Virginia's attorney general from 1874 until his death in 1877.

While the convention called to rewrite Virginia's constitution was meeting, a large gathering of white men organized the Conservative Party on December 11