Browse Items (43 total)

Oliver White Hill served as counsel in the groundbreaking Brown v. Board of Education case in 1954.

Richmond

Evelyn Thomas Butts led a successful challenge of Virginia’s poll tax all the way to the United States Supreme Court.

Norfolk

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

Caroline and Arlington Counties

Taking up painting early in her sixties, Queena Stovall created works that recalled her life in rural Virginia and earned her the title the "Grandma Moses of Virginia."

Lynchburg and Amherst County

Known as the "Female Elvis," Janis Martin was a pioneer rockabilly star.

Danville

Ethel Bailey Furman was one of the earliest African American women to work as an architect in Virginia.

Richmond

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

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

Irene Morgan's challenge to the Virginia law requiring segregated seating on interstate buses resulted in a landmark ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States.

Gloucester County

Susie M. Ames's writings made major contributions to understanding the social and cultural life of seventeenth-century Virginia.

Accomack County