Browse Items (16 total)
- Collection: Civil War and Reconstruction
Lucy Goode Brooks
Born enslaved, Lucy Goode Brooks founded the Friends' Asylum for Colored Orphans in Richmond.
Richmond
William Breedlove
A free African American before the Civil War, William Breedlove won election in 1867 to a convention called to rewrite Virginia's state constitution.
Essex
Fields Cook
Born into slavery, Fields Cook became a prominent African American leader in Richmond and Alexandria in the aftermath of the Civil War.
Richmond and Alexandria
Henry "Box" Brown
After his family was suddenly sold out of the state in 1848, he shipped himself in a wooden crate to freedom in 1849.
Richmond
Sara Bagby
With "a decided taste for freedom," Sara Lucy Bagby was embroiled in a celebrated legal case that tested the infamous Fugitive Slave Act during the secession crisis.
Wheeling
Dangerfield Newby
Dangerfield Newby was one of five African Americans who took up arms against slavery with fellow abolitionist John Brown at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in October 1859.
Culpeper County