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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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Craddock-Terry Records Walk on Over to the Museum
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The Craddock-Terry Shoe Company, once the largest employer in Lynchburg, produced lines of boots and shoes which were...
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Duck and Cover: Civil Defense in Virginia in the 1950s
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The future looked uncertain in the Atomic Age, and there was growing tension between America and the Soviet Union. See...
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Duke Ellington at the Mosque
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Late in his career, jazz great Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (1899–1974) composed three "Sacred Concerts," longer...
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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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![Ella Fitzgerald's Eyelashes](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/Ella%20Fitzgeralds%20Eyelashes_1997.82.3_v1.jpg.webp?itok=8WbRCt82)
Legendary singer and Virginia native Ella Fitzgerald, dubbed “The First Lady of Song,” exhilarated audiences with her...
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Episcopal Society for Cultural and Racial Unity poster
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The Episcopal Society for Cultural and Racial Unity promoted understanding among groups during the tensions of the civil...
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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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Flag Day
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Although it is not a national holiday, in 1916 President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation that officially...
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Flooded with Watercolors
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You can find many fine examples of watercolor paintings rendered on paper, manuscripts, maps, and miniatures in the...
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For the Love of Beauty: The Collections of Lora and Claiborne Robins
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![Block-Front Chest Block-Front Chest](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/VHE_Fortheloveofbeauty_robins_chest.jpg.webp?itok=kSnDQf6E)
Explore nineteenth-century Hudson River School landscape paintings and colonial furniture collected by philanthropists...
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Fraud! Controversy! And neat properties in Virginia: Things you never knew about title insurance
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Did you know that title insurance is almost exclusively an American business? In most industrialized countries...
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Freedom Riders
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In 1961, a small group of white and black volunteers rode public buses into the South to demonstrate that interstate...
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From Horse-Driven to Gas-Fueled Transportation
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![From Horse-Driven to Gas-Fueled Photograph of the Progress Manufacturing Company](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/FromHorseDrivenToGasFueled_Gas%20Pump_1996.178_v1.jpeg.webp?itok=DosrvziL)
This gravity-flow pump (c. 1927), used near Petersburg, Virginia, is evidence of the state’s transition from horse...
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House Tour
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Learn more about Great Hall, Sulgrave Bedroom, Withdrawing Room, Dining Room, and Library at the historic Tudor-style...
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Industrialization in Virginia
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The 1920 census revealed that, for the first time, more Americans were living in urban areas than rural ones. However...
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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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![Bury Jim Crow Bury Jim Crow](/sites/default/files/styles/fp_landscape_768x576/public/VHE_JimCrow_BuryJimCrow.jpg.webp?itok=bLk6kSKS)
Following the Civil War, black Virginians struggled to assert their independence and make freedom meaningful. In the...