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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…

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…

After the money the convention appropriated to pay its expenses had been exhausted, the convention required the auditor of public accounts to issue coupons to cover the unpaid per diem allowances of convention members. The delegates either redeemed…

This page from the convention's attendance book records the attendance and per diem allowances for Delegate William H. Andrews, who represented Isle of Wight and Surry Counties. A native of New Jersey, Andrews moved to Virginia to teach at the end of…

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…

As required by federal law to be readmitted to the United States, a convention met to write a new state constitution. It reformed local government on the more democratic model of the New England township; it required the General Assembly to create a…

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.

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…

The Fourteenth Amendment consists of five sections that conferred citizenship on former slaves and protected the rights of citizens from state abridgement thereof. It was passed by Congress in 1866 and ratified in 1868.

On October 22, 1867, African American men voted in Virginia for the first time. The army officers who conducted the election recorded the votes of white and black men on separate lists, and in King George County (and likely in other counties as well)…