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Virginia's General Assembly passed an act to create the state's first public school system on July 11, 1870. Section 47 of the act required that "white and colored persons shall not be taught in the same school, but in separate schools, under the…

In 1882, the Virginia General Assembly, which then included thirteen African American members, created the Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute, the nation's first fully state-supported four-year institution of higher learning for African…

Engraving of African American barber

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…

Sketch of enslaved people in auction room

Engraving of Eighth Street

The Southern Planter quoted a Warrenton (Va.) Whig report that Dickinson, Hill, & Co. "reached the enormous sum of two millions [dollars]" in sales. The Whig estimated that the gross sales of Richmond's slave traders exceeded four million dollars.

Article describing auction

Engraving of auction

Sketch of enslaved people