Filters  

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

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

Audubon's The Birds of America

Image

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

Article

Booker T. Washington

Image

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

Article

Bookplates

Image

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

Article

Clarise Sears Ramsey

Image

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

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

Confederate Love Poems

Image

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

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

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

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

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...

Article

Jim Crow to Civil Rights in Virginia

Image

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

Article

John Carter of Mars

Image

Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875–1950), best known as the creator of the Tarzan books, also wrote a popular science fiction...

Article

Juneteenth

Image

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