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A House Built of Virginia Stone

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Approximately forty miles south of Washington, D.C., the Aquia sandstone quarry on Government Island sits quietly in the...

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A Life Rediscovered: The Story of Emily Winfree

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Emily Winfree, an African American woman who lived through slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow, never...

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Arthur Ashe Jr.’s Family Tree: Tracing the Blackwell Family to 1735

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See a rare family tree, drawn by hand on canvas, tracing Arthur Ashe, Jr.’s family.

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Audubon's The Birds of America

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In the VMHC collections are several rare editions of his work, including a first edition of Viviparous Quadrupeds and...

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Booker T. Washington

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Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) was born enslaved on April 5, 1856, in Franklin County, Virginia. After emancipation...

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Bookplates

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The use of bookplates is almost as old as printing itself. They were used to record ownership and to reassure the owner...

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Broadsides

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Broadsides, or broadsheets, are items printed on one side of a sheet of paper and generally posted or distributed as...

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Clarise Sears Ramsey

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Charlotte Clarise Sears Risley Harrold Ramsey (1867–1922), whose parents were Joseph Henry Risley and Mary Elizabeth...

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Colored Knights of Pythias Helmet (c. 1890)

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Race has been a divisive issue throughout American history, and this impressive helmet tells part of the story.

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Confederate Love Poems

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The most prominent Civil War poetry is poetry of the battlefield.

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Convict Leasing

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For much of the twentieth century, convicts worked on Virginia’s roads. This practice grew out of the convict lease...

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Elizabeth Keckley

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Born a slave in Dinwiddie County, Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley (1818–1907) purchased her freedom in 1855 and supported...

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Fore-edge Painting

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Rarely are books prized as objects of art; often the content of the text, or the plates accompanying the text, are...

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Freedmen's Schools

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In the antebellum South, African Americans were generally prevented from receiving education. After Appomattox...

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How Did Enslaved People Support the Confederacy?

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Enslaved and free black people provided even more labor than usual for Virginia farms when 89 percent of eligible white...

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James Jones Archive (1870s-1960s)

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With a coat of faded red paint and a crude hand-forged hasp to secure its lid, the simple pine chest – once used to...

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Juneteenth

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Pop Civ is a series developed by the John Marshall Center for Constitutional History & Civics at the VMHC. By connecting...

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Letterhead

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Correspondence between individuals plays an important role in our understanding not only of how people communicated in...

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Life Portrait of Pocahontas

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The only life portrait of Pocahontas (1595–1617) and the only credible image of her, was engraved by Simon Van de Passe...

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Maggie Lena Walker

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Maggie Lena Walker (1864–1934) was the daughter of Elizabeth Draper, a former kitchen slave and then cook in the Civil...