Browse Items (186 total)

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…

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…

The Vietnam War was a conflict between the communist regime of North Vietnam and its southern allies, known as the Viet Cong, and South Vietnam whose principal ally was the United States. Many of the issues in Vietnam stemmed from a history of…

Arthur Robert Ashe was a Black tennis player and human rights activist who became one of the greatest tennis players in American history. He was the first and to date is the only Black man to win the singles title in three Grand Slam tennis events,…

The Ku Klux Klan (KKK), also known as the Klan or the Invisible Empirehas emerged mostly in Southern states in three different time periods of U.S. history. Each iteration of the group changed slightly to promote their beliefs and values in ways…

Between 1877 and the mid-1960s, authorities enforced racial segregation throughout Virginia. In 1902, the Virginia State Constitution, authorized by the Virginia General Assembly, instituted a poll tax in which all Black and persons of color would…

On May 17, 1954, after nearly two decades of legal challenges against racial segregation in public schools and higher education, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that school segregation was…

The 5-cent Battle of Gettysburg commemorative stamp is the third in a series of five stamps marking the Civil War Centennial from the U.S. Postal Service. Sales of the stamp began at the Gettysburg, Pennsylvania post office on July 1, 1963.According…

Danville does not commonly appear in the general narrative of civil rights protests and police brutality, but the city was the site of the most aggressive reaction to a peaceful civil rights protest in Virginia. In the 1960s, Danville was a small…

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a major event of the Cold War that took place during John F. Kennedy’s presidency. In October 1962, a United States spy plane captured evidence of the Soviet Union (present day Russia) moving nuclear weapons into Cuba…