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In this detail of his lithograph celebrating the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, James Carter Beard illustrated the ability of African Americans to take the pulpit and pastor churches in the South, where they had long been denied that right…

Designed by architect Richard Morris Hunt, Virginia Hall was Hampton's main building and included dormitory space, classrooms, a dining hall, and a chapel.

In 1865-1866 the American Tract Society printed several textbooks, including The Freedman's Spelling-Book, for use by freedpeople. In addition to teaching literacy, the spelling book illustrated words "in connection with important practical subjects;…

After the United States Army captured Petersburg, Confederate and Virginia officials fled Richmond during the night of April 2

During the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House in May 1864, Major General Edward Johnson and Brigadier G. H. Stewart were captured.

Mary Peake began teaching contraband at Fort Monroe in the autumn of 1861. Two years later, General Benjamin F. Butler had this school constructed and it remained under military control until 1865, when the American Missionary Association began…

Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute was founded in 1868 by General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, an agent of the Freedmen's Bureau. The first coeducational institution in Virginia, it prepared young men and women for careers in teaching.

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…

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…

Like many white Southerners, white Virginians feared that African American support would lead to Radical Republican domination in state politics. Hostile whites described African American voters as easily manipulated by unscrupulous northerners…