On the morning of September 11, 2001 four flights were hijacked by members of the Islamic extremist group, al- Qaeda, in coordinated attack against the United States. All four hijacked planes were scheduled to be cross-country flights from the East…
Arthur Robert Ashe was a Black tennis player and human rights activist who became one of the greatest tennis players in American history. To date he is the first and only Black man to win the singles title in three of tennis' Grand Slam events, the…
At the close of the Civil War and after the passing of the Fifteenth Amendment, all male citizens, regardless of their race or previous status, were supposed to be able to vote. However, many states, including Virginia, found ways to exclude Black…
Arthur Robert Ashe was a Black tennis player and human rights activist who became one of the greatest tennis players in American history. To date he is the first and only Black man to win the singles title in three of tennis' Grand Slam events, the…
The First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the autumn of 1774 in response to the Intolerable Acts, which had been put in place by an act of Parliament. Representatives of the twelve colonies came together to determine how to…
In January 1975, the National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year was a presidential commission established by President Gerald Ford. The purpose of the commission was to work in conjunction with the International Women’s Year…
The annual payment of tribute by Virginia's Indians has been a long-standing practice that still occurs today. In 1646, Necotowance, "the King of the Indians" as the English referred to him, signed a treaty to end the third Anglo-Indian War. Annual…
Lawrence Douglas Wilder (1931–) was sworn in as governor of Virginia on January 13, 1990. Wilder, a grandson of enslaved peoples, made history in 1985 when he became the first Black person elected to statewide office in Virginia.
Wilder was a…
In 1919, at the National American Woman Suffrage Association’s (NAWSA) conference, President Carrie Chapman Catt proposed in her address the creation of a “league of women voters to finish the fight and aid in the reconstruction of the nation”. In…
Governor Mark Warner signed the Emergency Preparedness Executive Order on Jan. 31, 2002. The order launched the Secure Virginia Initiative, established the Secure Virginia Panel, directed state agencies to prepare or update emergency response plans,…