Browse Items (377 total)

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.…

African American Methodists in Portsmouth constructed their own church in 1857. The building was used by escaping slaves as part of the Underground Railroad. Required by Virginia law to have a white minister, the congregation called its first African…

Includes street index, electric car lines and bus routes. Includes surrounding streets in Henrico and Chesterfield Counties. Shows Richmond city limits, streets, railroads, interurban lines and ward boundaries. Scale [ca. 1:20,000].

This printed broadside was circulated in Caroline County to notify men where and how to register to vote prior to the election for convention delegates in 1867, the first in which African American men were able to vote.

The Freedmen's Bureau also had responsibility for administering land (plantations) that white Southerners abandoned, although in Virginia that did not often happen. Nevertheless, many freedpeople believed that the property of their former owners…

Throughout the Civil War thousands of enslaved men, women, and children attained their freedom by seeking refuge with United States troops as they moved across Virginia. They were declared "contraband of war" in May 1861 and Freedmen's Villages grew…

After the Civil War many white Virginians could not vote because they had supported the Confederacy. In June 1865, the General Assembly restored voting rights to some of those white men, but the federal government required men who had supported the…

African Americans in several states, including Virginia, voted for the first time in the autumn of 1867. In this image, a white man is seen conducting the election. An old African American, probably a former slave and wearing patched clothes,…

In 1865-1866 the American Tract Society printed several textbooks, including The Freedman's Spelling-Book, for use by freedpeople. In addition to teaching literacy, the spelling book illustrated words "in connection with important practical subjects;…

The American Tract Society was one of many religious and charitable organizations that contributed to the education of freedpeople during and after the Civil War. This circular quotes its mission statement: "The American Union Commission is…