Browse Items (97 total)

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…

Lucy Goode Brooks solicited support from African American churches and a local meeting of the Society of Friends (Quakers) in Richmond to establish the Friends' Asylum for Colored Orphans, which the General Assembly incorporated in 1872. The charter…

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 American Tract Society was one of many religious and charitable organizations that contributed to the education of freedpeople during and after the Civil War. This circular quotes its mission statement: "The American Union Commission is…

Seeking to establish a self-defined "National Thanksgiving Day for Freedom," African Americans sponsored a three-day Colored People's Celebration, held in Richmond, in October 1890.

After the money the convention appropriated to pay its expenses had been exhausted, the convention required the auditor of public accounts to issue coupons to cover the unpaid per diem allowances of convention members. The delegates either redeemed…

Throughout the Civil War thousands of enslaved men, women, and children attained their freedom by seeking refuge with United States troops as they moved across Virginia. They were declared "contraband of war" in May 1861.

In December 1865 Pollard Gaines, an African American, contracted with Royall H. Eubank to work his Nelson County farm, tend to all the livestock, repair buildings and fences, cut and haul firewood, fill the ice house, and cultivate the garden "for…

Before the Civil War, white Virginians feared slave rebellions and thus exerted repressive control over enslaved people. After the war they feared retribution by the freedpeople and in some parts of the state they attempted to disarm African…

Before the Civil War, churches often had black and white members, although they were segregated within the congregation. African American churches were required by Virginia law to have white ministers, and after the Civil War, many African Americans…