Browse Items (47 total)

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…

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…

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…

The Federal Reserve System, sponsored by Virginia State Senator Carter Glass, was signed into law on December 23, 1913 by President Woodrow Wilson. In 1914, the city of Richmond was selected to be the home to one of 12 central bank locations and was…

During World War II booklets were published to assist homemakers, who were mostly women at that time, 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…

During World War II the American government asked civilians to participate in the war effort. A common way for the government to communicate with civilians was through posters hung in public places. Inspirational, informative, and instructive, the…

After the United States entered WW I in 1917, young men who worked in agriculture left to join the military or find better jobs working for the government and the burgeoning defense industry. The departure of them men left farms without enough people…

American society underwent changes during both WWI and WWII. The roles of women shifted from domestic roles as caretakers and home makers to working in male- dominated fields like agriculture and manufacturing in factories. Many factories shifted…

“Safety is better than compensation” it a sentiment which echoes—both explicitly and implicitly—through the wording of these safety posters (see link below to view additional images). In these posters, cartoon workers are eaten by machines and lose…

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…