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A joint Congressional committee was appointed in 1865 to determine whether the former Confederate states were entitled to have representation in Congress. More than one hundred witnesses testified early in 1866 about the situations in the four…

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…

The freedmen of Petersburg chose a man named David May to represent them to the Freedmen's Bureau "to adjudicate in all claims, or cases of difficulty arising between Whites and Freedmen, or between Negroes themselves."

The first page of an alphabetized list of male freed men in New Kent County recording who had formerly owned them and how much tax they owed. Under Virginia law, males older than sixteen paid an annual poll tax. At that time, payment of a poll tax…

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…

In this detail of his lithograph celebrating the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, James Carter Beard illustrated the ability of African Americans ability to marry legally, a right they had been forbidden under slavery.

For decades after the Civil War African Americans searched for family members who had been separated by the domestic slave trade. In 1865 Stephen Flemming, who had been sold from Bowling Green, Virginia, to Louisiana about 1849, wrote Governor…

For decades after the Civil War African Americans searched for family members who had been separated by the domestic slave trade. In 1882, Jennie Brown, of Corinth, Mississippi, wrote to the sheriff of Mecklenburg County, Virginia, to ask about…

Virginia's General Assembly passed legislation in 1866 to legalize the "Marriages of Colored Persons now cohabiting as Husband and Wife." Freedmen's Bureau agents were authorized to compile registers of cohabiting couples who considered themselves…

After the Virginia General Assembly passed legislation in 1866 to legalize marriages of formerly enslaved men and women, freed couples registered their unions with the Freedmen's Bureau in large numbers. Agents documented their names, ages, names of…