The search results below contain listings from our website. To search our library and museum collections catalogs, please visit the Collections page.
Article
Colored Knights of Pythias Helmet (c. 1890)
Image
Race has been a divisive issue throughout American history, and this impressive helmet tells part of the story.
Article
Connecticut sculpture
Image
Records of the Best Products Company provide interesting insights into the history of this iconic sculpture.
Article
Convict Leasing
Image
For much of the twentieth century, convicts worked on Virginia’s roads. This practice grew out of the convict lease...
Article
Duck and Cover: Civil Defense in Virginia in the 1950s
Image
The future looked uncertain in the Atomic Age, and there was growing tension between America and the Soviet Union. See...
Article
Dugout Canoe
Image
The dugout canoe was an Indian concept but one so well suited to the Virginia rivers that Europeans and Africans also...
Article
Duke Ellington at the Mosque
Image
Late in his career, jazz great Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (1899–1974) composed three "Sacred Concerts," longer...
Article
Education in Virginia
Image
The Virginia Constitution of 1869, passed during Reconstruction, established a statewide system of free public schools...
Article
Elizabeth I
Image
Elizabeth I (1533–1603), queen of England, never married and was known as the virgin queen. The first English attempts...
Article
Elizabeth Keckley
Image
Born a slave in Dinwiddie County, Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley (1818–1907) purchased her freedom in 1855 and supported...
Article
Ella Fitzgerald's False Eyelashes
Image
Legendary singer and Virginia native Ella Fitzgerald, dubbed “The First Lady of Song,” exhilarated audiences with her...
Article
Episcopal Society for Cultural and Racial Unity poster
Image
The Episcopal Society for Cultural and Racial Unity promoted understanding among groups during the tensions of the civil...
Article
Equal Suffrage League of Virginia
Image
Learn about how the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia helped women gain the right to vote.
Article
Flag Day
Image
Although it is not a national holiday, in 1916 President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation that officially...
Article
Freedmen's Schools
Image
In the antebellum South, African Americans were generally prevented from receiving education. After Appomattox...
Article
Freedom Riders
Image
In 1961, a small group of white and black volunteers rode public buses into the South to demonstrate that interstate...
Article
From Horse-Driven to Gas-Fueled Transportation
Image
This gravity-flow pump (c. 1927), used near Petersburg, Virginia, is evidence of the state’s transition from horse...
Article
Harold's Boys
Image
On June 26, 1944, 2d Lt. Harold Leazer took the controls of his B-24 Liberator as it lifted off from its base in...
Article
How Did Civilians Suffer?
Image
White women and children were left to fend for themselves, and many became widows and orphans when one in five...
Article
How Did Enslaved People Support the Confederacy?
Image
Enslaved and free black people provided even more labor than usual for Virginia farms when 89 percent of eligible white...
Article
Jacob L. "JL" Morewitz
Image
Jacob L. “JL” Morewitz was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1896 but raised in Norfolk, Virginia. In 1916, at the age of...