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Arming the Commonwealth

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From providing protection from enemy combatants to finding dinner for a family, weapons have played a significant role...

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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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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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Captain John Smith

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John Smith (baptized 1580 –1631), an English soldier, author, and adventurer, played a crucial role in establishing the...

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Christmas in the Trenches

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Read excerpts from soldiers' letters home about their Christmas meals while stationed away from home.

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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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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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Dugout Canoe

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The dugout canoe was an Indian concept but one so well suited to the Virginia rivers that Europeans and Africans also...

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Education in Virginia

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The Virginia Constitution of 1869, passed during Reconstruction, established a statewide system of free public schools...

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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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Ella Fitzgerald's False Eyelashes

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Legendary singer and Virginia native Ella Fitzgerald, dubbed “The First Lady of Song,” exhilarated audiences with her...

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Equal Suffrage League of Virginia

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Learn about how the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia helped women gain the right to vote.

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Jacob L. "JL" Morewitz

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Jacob L. “JL” Morewitz was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1896 but raised in Norfolk, Virginia. In 1916, at the age of...

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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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Jim Crow to Civil Rights in Virginia

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Following the Civil War, black Virginians struggled to assert their independence and make freedom meaningful. In the...

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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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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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Love and War

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Though it has torn many asunder, war has also brought people together.

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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...

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Mosher's Memoir: WWI from a Virginia Soldier's Point of View

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Take an inside look at the experiences of Hugh E. Mosher of Roanoke, Virginia as he writes about his life as a soldier...