Browse Items (23 total)

The contributions of African Americans to the politics, life, and culture of the Commonwealth of Virginia have often been ignored in traditional histories and textbooks. Historian Luther Porter Jackson (1892–1950), however, researched and wrote…

Waterways provided the people of the Eastern Shore and Hampton Roads regions with access to food, supplies, and transport long before English colonists arrived in 1607. As English settlements displaced and removed Indigenous people from the land near…

Indigenous peoples, including Virginia Indian tribes, were not considered American citizens even after ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. They often faced discrimination and were denied the equal protection of the laws. Under segregation laws,…

The Emancipation Proclamation, issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, declared freedom to enslaved people within states that were in rebellion against the United States. All enslaved people in Virginia were to be free, but this could…

Touted as the largest and most magnificent exposition of all time, the New York World’s Fair opened at Flushing Meadows in April 1939. In the Court of States, one exhibition was strikingly different from the rest: the Virginia Room, “an island of…

In 1924, the federal government began looking for land in the southern Appalachian Mountains to create a large national park which would be easily accessible by individuals living in the eastern United States. The park opened in 1936 and was…

The Skyline Drive was created and designed to be a scenic driving road as part of Shenandoah National Park. The Shenandoah National Park was created in 1926 to preserve the beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains for recreational use and for future…

Amid the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt won the presidential election over Herbert Hoover making him the first Democratic president in 12 years. As President, FDR took quick action, through his New Deal initiative, to provide relief to…

James H. Dooley was a Virginia politician and businessman in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. After the Civil War, he amassed a fortune by expanding railroad services. In 1869, he married Sallie May Dooley, a daughter of a prominent family who…

In the 1930s, the Virginia State Commission on Conservation and Development’s Division of History and Archaeology received funds from the Works Progress Administration’s (later known as the Works Project Administration) Federal Art Project to…