Browse Items (37 total)

As Americans prepared to send soldiers overseas during the First World War, the government reorganized the economy to better supply and equip its troops. Peacetime industries shifted towards producing needed military goods (like uniforms and…

In 1919, at the National American Woman Suffrage Association’s (NAWSA) convention, President Carrie Chapman Catt proposed in her address the creation of a “league of women voters to finish the fight and aid in the reconstruction of the nation.” In…

Maggie Lena Walker was an African American woman who became a banker, business leader, and social reformer. She was the first woman to establish and become the president of a bank in the United States. Walker was born in 1864 in Richmond, Virginia.…

Virgnia has a long history of growing peanuts. In the 1700’s, people from West Africa were brought to be enslaved in the colonies. Peanuts were a common food item in their home countries and, to feed people familiar products from home. For those…

The Richmond Planet was first published in 1882, seventeen years after the end of the Civil War. The thirteen founders (including James H. Hayes, James H. Johnston, E.R. Carter, Walter Fitzhugh, Henry Hucles, Albert V. Norrell, Benjamin A. Graves,…

During the 1920's, a dramatic change in communication and entertainment occurred. Radio allowed people to connect with others across the country and, eventually, across continents. The  development of new technology helped to increase production in…

Marriage licenses such as this one began to appear after Racial Integrity Act was introduced in 1924. The application for marriage shows how an individual had to indicate that he or she was not "a habitual criminal, idiot, imbecile, hereditary…

In 1924, Virginia's General Assembly passed the Racial Integrity Act, which was designed to stop the “intermixture” of white and Black people. The act banned interracial marriage by requiring marriage applicants to identify their race as "white,"…

What is known as the Progressive Movement in the United States lasted from the late 19th century until the 1940s. While many positive social reforms occurred, there were also laws enacted in which people who were thought to be “inferior” in some way…

In 1918, Clinton L. Williams, the leader of the local chapter of the ACCA Shriners fraternal organization, conceived an elaborate new “temple” to house the activities and growing needs of the chapter. The Shriners, as they are known, have had a…