Browse Items (23 total)

After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, Virginia resisted desegregating its schools for years. One tactic was the creation of a state Pupil Placement…

In the decades after World War II, many towns and cities across the United States considered plans to redevelop aging neighborhoods. Many of these neighborhoods suffered from substandard housing, including public housing that had been erected during…

On May 17, 1954, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. Virginia's school system had been segregated since it was established in 1870, and…

In 1896 the United States Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that racial segregation did not violate the "equal protection of the laws" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Virginia and other southern states employed the doctrine of "separate…

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…

On February 1, 1960 the “Greensboro Four” sat down at the Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. By February 5th, hundreds of students had joined the movement to integrate the lunch counters. By the end of March, the movement had…

Black men gained the right to vote when the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified in 1870. Later in the 19th century, white men in Virginia passed laws requiring the payment of poll taxes. A new state constitution in 1902…

After the United States Supreme Court ruled in 1954 that school segregation was unconstitutional in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education, Virginia's white political leaders at the state and local levels led a Massive Resistance movement,…

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, Kansas that school segregation was…

When the United States Supreme Court issued its ruling on May 17, 1954, in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, it declared that racial segregation in schools was unconstitutional. The ruling overturned the “separate but equal” doctrine…