Browse Items (20 total)

Isaiah Wallace was one of thirteen children of a formerly enslaved woman. In this interview he describes the difficult times faced by his family after the end of the Civil War. Wallace ran away as a teenager, and after working in different jobs and…

Hampton Institute student and former slave Lorenzo Ivy tells a story about the relationship between his family, his former master, and the Freedmen's Bureau after emancipation.

Lorenzo L. Ivy was born in Pittsylvania County at the end of the Civil War. He described the cruel treatment of his enslaved family members and the slave trade. He attended Hampton with Booker T. Washington and graduated in 1875.

Mary Dangerfield Wallace was born during the 1870s. She describes her education and her forty-four years of teaching in public schools, some of which she and later her husband helped found and build.

Newspapers reported that about 20,000 African Americans turned out on April 3, 1866, to celebrate their emancipation in a parade from the fairgrounds to Capitol Square. Although many white Richmonders had expressed anger at the celebration, African…

Sections of the 3166th Quartermaster Service Company, Color Guard and 3167th Quartermaster Service Company of Camp Hill, march down Jefferson Avenue, in Newport News, during a parade marking the 81st Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation.…

African Americans cheered as Abraham Lincoln toured the city of Richmond a day after it had been liberated by the United States Army in April 1865.

The Thirteenth Amendment formally abolished slavery in the United States.

Includes information on background and education of an unnamed African American lawyer (likely Thomas Calhoun Walker), who lived with his wife, a former teacher, in Gloucester County. He describes his struggles to attend Hampton Institute and his…

William I. Johnson Jr., was born enslaved and was a butler for the Johnson family of Goochland County and Richmond. He describes slave auctions and slave hiring. He details his Civil War experiences, including how he escaped to Union lines. After the…