Browse Items (217 total)

Despite the ratification of both the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments that granted all adult citizens in the United States the right to vote, many eligible Black voters in southern states were systematically blocked from participating in the…

After the Civil War, the temperance movement swept the nation. Starting with Maine in 1851, states and localities around the country held referendums to let its citizens vote on whether or not to ban alcohol. In 1886, Virginia adopted the “Local…

In October 1859, white abolitionist John Brown led an armed raid on the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), in an attempt to overthrow the system of slavery. Sixteen people died in the raid. Brown and six of his…

At the turn of the twentieth century, the call for Prohibition had become a national issue, espoused by many politicians and pushed by several strong organizations. The American Temperance Society, started in 1826, acted as a support group for…

During World War II booklets were published to assist homemakers provide for their families and meet the requirements of the wartime ration system created after the U.S. entered the war in December 1941. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive…

Harry Flood Byrd (1887–1966) served as state senator from 1915 to 1926, governor from 1926 to 1930, and as a United States Senator from 1933 to 1965. Byrd hailed from Winchester, Virginia, and came from a prominent and politically connected family.…

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 to cars and hikers. The park opened in 1936 and was officially completed in 1939. The…

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…

Like other places around the country, Virginia saw increased suburban development in the years after World War II, especially around the naval and shipbuilding areas of Hampton Roads and near Washington, D.C. The construction of better roads and…

Lawrence Douglas Wilder (1931–  ) made history more than once in Virginia, and became the first Black US governor to serve a state since Reconstruction. The grandson of enslaved people, Doug Wilder attended racially segregated public schools in…