Browse Items (16 total)

For decades, Virginia localities kept separate registers for African American and white voters. These registers are for Southampton County and record the African Americans and whites who voted at the first precinct of the second magisterial district…

The Republican slate of candidates in 1869 included the current governor Henry Horatio Wells, the current attorney general Thomas Russell Bowden, and an African American physician, Joseph Dennis Harris, for lieutenant governor. In the election, the…

Opponents of the constitution produced this political broadside to frighten white Virginians into voting against ratification of the constitution by spreading fears that African Americans would be able to beat white children in the new public schools…

Virginia's constitutional convention met in Richmond from December 3, 1867 until April 17, 1868. Twenty-four of the delegates were African Americans, four of whom are identified in this image: Willis A. Hodges, of Princess Anne County; Lewis Lindsey…

Early in the 1880s African Americans held public offices in the city of Danville. During this time, a biracial coalition known as the Readjuster Party had won control of the General Assembly and the statewide offices. A circular letter published with…

Virginia's Attorney General Thomas R. Bowden, a Unionist Republican, published his opinion during July 1865 in response to questions about who was eligible to hold office in the state. He specified that any person who had held office under the…

Virginia's Attorney General Thomas R. Bowden, a Unionist Republican, published his opinion during July 1865 in response to questions about who could vote in the state's upcoming election. He specified that white men over age twenty-one could vote…

Raleigh Travers Daniel was an attorney who helped establish the Conservative Party in 1867. He served as Virginia's attorney general from 1874 until his death in 1877.

While the convention called to rewrite Virginia's constitution was meeting, a large gathering of white men organized the Conservative Party on December 11

In the spring of 1867, Congress passed an act that required the former Confederate states to hold conventions, in which African Americans were eligible to serve, and to write new state constitutions. In Virginia, African Americans, former Unionists,…