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Advice and Etiquette Books
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Studying etiquette books offers researchers a glimpse of how people interacted and how they adapted to their changing...
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Affidavit, 1693
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This affidavit informs the governor that Frank, a man of African descent enslaved by Henry Gibbs, has been jailed on...
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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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Children's Manuscripts
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Prominent Virginians are well represented in the many manuscripts housed at the VMHC. However, documents by individuals...
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Colonial Cookbooks
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Food and dining were integral to social life in the eighteenth century, particularly among the upper class. The gentry...
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Diaries
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Do you remember the first time you swam in the ocean? What about the first movie you watched? Moments like those and...
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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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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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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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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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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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Mary-Cooke Branch Munford
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Learn how Mary-Cooke Branch Munford helped improve education in Virginia.
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Men of Color To Arms?
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When the war began, many black Americans—North and South—volunteered to serve as soldiers. United by a belief in black...
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Olaudah Equiano
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Snatched from his Ibo village in Nigeria at the age of eleven, Equiano (c. 1745-1797) was transported to Barbados...
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Proud American Day program
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Learn about the beginning of Black History Month.
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Richmond in the Midst of the Civil War
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As the Confederate capital, Richmond experienced waves of change that saw the city lurch from the untidy influx of...