Browse Items (112 total)

When the first English settlers arrived in 1607, the Church of England served as the official church of the Virginia Colony. Under the 1689 English Act of Toleration, Protestants who were not members of the Church of England were still required to…

George Washington was born in 1732 in Westmoreland County, Virginia, to a relatively prosperous family. His father died when he was eleven and so he was not sent to school in England like his older half-brothers, but studied with tutors. He trained…

After members of the Convention of 1787 drafted a new constitution for the United States, James Madison, John Jay, and Alexander Hamilton wrote a series of 85 essays in support of the new government under the pen name "Publius" (a statesman who…

In February 1790, the Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society, led by Benjamin Franklin, submitted a plea to Congress to debate the issue of slavery and abolish the slave trade. Congress considered the petition and formed a committee for further…

The Racial Integrity Act was introduced in 1924 in the General Assembly as Senate Bill No. 219, then as House Bill No. 311. When the act was passed, it prohibited interracial marriage and defined a white person as someone "who has no trace whatsoever…

After the American Revolution, some Virginians freed some of their enslaved laborers, and by 1800 the population of free Black men and women had increased to nearly 20,000, primarily in urban areas like Richmond and Petersburg. Many white Virginians…

Thomas Jefferson  (1743–1826) was born at Shadwell, along the Rivanna River in what is now Albemarle County. At age fourteen, when his father died, Jefferson inherited more than 5,000 acres of land, about twenty enslaved laborers, and his father's…

Nat Turner was born enslaved in Southampton County, Virginia, in 1800. He became a preacher and self-proclaimed prophet who believed that he had been called to lead a rebellion against slavery. On August 21, 1831, Turner began a slave revolt that…

In December 1833, a group of about sixty Black and white men met in Philadelphia and organized the American Anti-Slavery Society to seek the immediate emancipation of enslaved people. The Society viewed slavery as a violation of the principle of…

Before the end of slavery, free Black Virginians found their liberty in constant jeopardy because they were not considered citizens. After Gabriel's attempted slave rebellion in 1800, the General Assembly passed an act in 1801 requiring county…