Browse Items (23 total)

The contributions of African Americans to the politics, life, and culture of the Commonwealth of Virginia have often been ignored in traditional histories and textbooks. Historian Luther Porter Jackson (1892–1950), however, researched and wrote…

The Skyline Drive was created and designed to be a scenic driving road as part of Shenandoah National Park. The Shenandoah National Park was created in 1926 to preserve the beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains for recreational use and for future…

Indigenous peoples, including Virginia Indian tribes, were not considered American citizens even after ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. They often faced discrimination and were denied the equal protection of the laws. Under segregation laws,…

The Emancipation Proclamation, issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, declared freedom to enslaved people within states that were in rebellion against the United States. All enslaved people in Virginia were to be free, but this could…

Touted as the largest and most magnificent exposition of all time, the New York World’s Fair opened at Flushing Meadows in April 1939. In the Court of States, one exhibition was strikingly different from the rest: the Virginia Room, “an island of…

After the United States entered WW I in 1917, young men who worked in agriculture left to join the military or find better jobs working for the government and the burgeoning defense industry. The departure of them men left farms without enough people…

Lynchburg native Desmond T. Doss (1919-2006) was the first conscientious objector to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor. A conscientious objector is one who is opposed to serving in the armed forces and/or bearing arms on the grounds of moral…

On April 14, 1945, U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) was buried in Hyde Park, New York following funeral services at the White House.  Roosevelt had been elected four times to the office of President, a feat never matched, and now…

From September 1939 - December 1941, the United States was not officially at war with any of the Axis powers. While support was given to the Allies through programs such as Lend-Lease, there was a strong isolationist sentiment following World War I…

James H. Dooley was a Virginia politician and businessman in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. After the Civil War, he amassed a fortune by expanding railroad services. In 1869, he married Sallie May Dooley, a daughter of a prominent family who…