Browse Items (47 total)

Annie Belle Daniels, the founder of the Madam Daniels School of Beauty Culture, is an influential civil rights and political activist in Newport News.

Newport News

As a student at Robert Russa Moton High School, John Stokes helped lead a strike by pupils to gain better education facilities, an act of defiance that contributed to the integration of public schools in the United States.

Prince Edward County

Henrietta Lacks's cells, known in the medical world as HeLa cells, were the first human cells to be grown successfully outside the body for more than a short time.

Clover

Robert Walter Johnson was a driving force behind the integration of the sport of tennis.

Lynchburg

Born into slavery, Lucy Francis Simms was a highly respected elementary school teacher in Harrisonburg for more then fifty years.

Harrisonburg

After his family was suddenly sold out of the state in 1848, he shipped himself in a wooden crate to freedom in 1849.

Richmond

Gowan Pamphlet was born enslaved, but persevered to become a well-known preacher, gain his freedom, and establish a Baptist church in Williamsburg that continues as an active congregation today.

Williamsburg

Throughout his law career and the public offices he has held, Henry L. Marsh has committed his life to bringing equal rights and opportunities to African Americans.

Richmond

Florence Saunders Farley has fought against racism and bias to open doors in science and politics for African American women in Virginia.

Roanoke and Petersburg

Through legal and political actions, civil rights activist Dorothy Bigelow Hamm fought for African American equality.

Caroline and Arlington Counties