Civil Rights
Throughout Virginia’s history, various groups of people—including people of color, women, and LGBTQ+ communities—have demanded the full and equal rights of citizenship. A watershed moment was the fight for Black equality in the 1950s and ’60s which led to the prohibition of discrimination on the basis of race, as well as sex, national origin, disability status, and religion. But inequalities persist, so the struggle for civil rights continues to challenge us to expand our understanding of equity and commitment to “justice for all”.
Content Related to Civil Rights
Juneteenth
Jacob L. "JL" Morewitz
The Twentieth Century: Cities, Cars, and Civil Rights
Convict Leasing
Freedom Riders
Who was Oliver Hill?
Thomas Jefferson’s 1774 Summary View of the Rights of British America
Murals Inspired by the Story of Virginia
James Jones Archive (1870s-1960s)
Colored Knights of Pythias Helmet (c. 1890)
Separate and Unequal: The Breakdown of Segregation in Virginia Schools
Care Beyond National and Color Lines: Filipino Nurses in Virginia Across the 20th Century
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The Story of Virginia: Highlights from the Virginia Museum of History & Culture
The Story of Virginia tells a fascinating story, sharing more than four hundred evocative objects from the Virginia Museum of History & Culture. The Commonwealth is not merely a chapter of U.S. history; it is at the epicenter of its most pivotal moments.
Why They Marched
Looking beyond the national leadership of the suffrage movement, an acclaimed historian gives voice to the thousands of women from different backgrounds, races, and religions whose local passion and protest resounded throughout the land.
The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote
Soon to be a major television event, the nail-biting climax of one of the greatest political battles in American history: the ratification of the constitutional amendment that granted women the right to vote.
The Road to Healing: A Civil Rights Reparations Story in Prince Edward County, Virginia
The Road to Healing: A Civil Rights Reparations Story in Prince Edward County, Virginia by Ken Woodley is his first-person account of the steps taken in the 18-month fight to create what legendary civil rights activist Julian Bond told the author would become the first civil rights-era reparation in United States history.
She Can Bring Us Home: Dr. Dorothy Boulding Ferebee, Civil Rights Pioneer
Long before it became the slogan of the presidential campaign for Barack Obama, Dorothy Ferebee (1898–1980) lived by the motto YES, WE CAN. In She Can Bring Us Home, Diane Kiesel tells Ferebee’s extraordinary story of struggle and personal sacrifice to a new generation.
We Face the Dawn: Oliver Hill, Spottswood Robinson and the Legal Team that Dismantled Jim Crow
In We Face the Dawn, Margaret Edds tells the gripping story of how the South's most significant grassroots legal team challenged the barriers of racial segregation in mid-century America.
Determined: The 400-Year Struggle for Black Equality
This book addresses the urgent need for a greater understanding of systemic racism in America through a concise and accessible survey of Black history in Virginia, from the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in 1619 to the groundswell of racial justice protests in 2020.
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