Browse Items (97 total)

African Americans in several states, including Virginia, voted for the first time in the autumn of 1867. In this image, a white man is seen conducting the election. An old African American, probably a former slave and wearing patched clothes,…

The Fourteenth Amendment consists of five sections that conferred citizenship on former slaves and protected the rights of citizens from state abridgement thereof. It was passed by Congress in 1866 and ratified in 1868.

Harper's Weekly published two political cartoons by Thomas Nast, one contrasting Confederate leaders applying for a pardon that would restore their voting rights with another of a wounded African American soldier who was denied the right of suffrage.…

Brigadier General Robert Huston Milroy (1816–1890), commanding the United States Army units then posted in Winchester, pronounced the Emancipation Proclamation in effect, thereby freeing all enslaved Virginians in Winchester and Frederick…

In this detail of his lithograph celebrating the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, James Carter Beard illustrated the ability of African Americans families to live together without facing the threat of separation as had been the case under…

George Lewis was born free before the Civil War and attended Freedmen's Bureau schools in Richmond before earning a law degree from Howard University. In this interview he talks about his family background, his education, the Civil War and the…

In addition to teaching freed men, women, and children to read and write, northern missionary and relief associations also established industrial schools for adults to help African Americans achieve self-sufficiency in the new free labor market.

The Freedmen's Bureau also had responsibility for administering land (plantations) that white Southerners abandoned, although in Virginia that did not often happen. Nevertheless, many freedpeople believed that the property of their former owners…

First African Baptist Church was founded in Richmond in 1841 when the white and black members of the city's First Baptist Church separated into two congregations. First African Baptist Church may have been one of the largest church buildings in…

The Seabrook Warehouse did not burn in Richmond's evacuation fire and reopened in June 1865. About two-dozen freedmen were employed at the warehouse at the time.