The search results below contain listings from our website. To search our library and museum collections catalogs, please visit the Collections page.
Article
A Beardless Boy of Seventeen Years
Image
Even before Aristophanes wrote of Lysistrata’s plan to end the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE) by convincing the women...
Article
A Life Rediscovered: The Story of Emily Winfree
Image
Emily Winfree, an African American woman who lived through slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow, never...
Article
Abolitionist Pitcher
Image
Learn about how this pitcher based on Uncle Tom's Cabin was used as propoganda in the mid-1800s.
Article
Arthur Ashe Jr.’s Family Tree: Tracing the Blackwell Family to 1735
Image
See a rare family tree, drawn by hand on canvas, tracing Arthur Ashe, Jr.’s family.
Article
Booker T. Washington
Image
Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) was born enslaved on April 5, 1856, in Franklin County, Virginia. After emancipation...
Article
Care Beyond National and Color Lines: Filipino Nurses in Virginia Across the 20th Century
Image
As of Winter 2021, Virginia remains among the top ten states for largest Filipino American populations, and by no...
Article
Clarise Sears Ramsey
Image
Charlotte Clarise Sears Risley Harrold Ramsey (1867–1922), whose parents were Joseph Henry Risley and Mary Elizabeth...
Article
College Football
Image
Learn more about Virginians' long-standing love affair with football.
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
Convict Leasing
Image
For much of the twentieth century, convicts worked on Virginia’s roads. This practice grew out of the convict lease...
Article
Dolley Madison
Image
Dolley (Payne) Todd Madison (1768–1849) lived through three wars, knew eleven presidents, and was a gracious and...
Article
Education in Virginia
Image
The Virginia Constitution of 1869, passed during Reconstruction, established a statewide system of free public schools...
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
Equal Suffrage League of Virginia
Image
Learn about how the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia helped women gain the right to vote.
Article
For the Love of Beauty: The Collections of Lora and Claiborne Robins
Image
Explore nineteenth-century Hudson River School landscape paintings and colonial furniture collected by philanthropists...
Article
Freedmen's Schools
Image
In the antebellum South, African Americans were generally prevented from receiving education. After Appomattox...
Article
Indian Tribes of North America
Image
In the museum's rare book collection, a remarkable compilation of images exists in History of the Indian Tribes of North...
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...
Article
James Jones Archive (1870s-1960s)
Image
With a coat of faded red paint and a crude hand-forged hasp to secure its lid, the simple pine chest – once used to...