Browse Items (215 total)

Arthur Robert Ashe was one of the greatest tennis players in American history and a noted human rights activist. He was the first and to date is the only Black man to win the singles title in three Grand Slam tennis events--the U.S. Open (1968), the…

The Loving v. Virginia case ended a long history of banning marriage between white and Black Virginians dating back to the 17th century. In 1878 the General Assembly enacted a law punishing both parties in an interracial marriage with prison…

The Ku Klux Klan (KKK), or the Klan, is an extremist organization that promotes white supremacy and “100 percent Americanism.” The Klan experienced three distinct periods of power in the United States: during Reconstruction (1865–1870s), between the…

From late in the 19th century until the middle of the 1960s, Virginia's white authorities tried to keep Black citizens from full participation in government and society. The Virginia state constitution adopted in 1902 reinstituted a poll tax as a…

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…

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…

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 occurred during John F. Kennedy’s presidency. In October 1962 a United States spy plane captured evidence that the Soviet Union was moving nuclear missiles into Cuba. Located just 90 miles off the coast of Florida, Cuba had…

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…

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…