Browse Items (33 total)

Richmond native Lila Meade Valentine was born in 1865 and devoted much of her life to advocating education, health-care reform, and woman suffrage. She played an important role in creating organizations which focused on health care and public schools…

For a significant portion of American history, women were not allowed to vote. Although they were considered citizens with rights equal to men, voting was considered a privilege and not a right and thus not extended to women. In the 1910s, women…

Circulated in Staunton, Virginia, the broadside dates to sometime between 1900 and 1919. In it, the women of Staunton asked the men in their community to vote in favor of prohibition or the legal elimination of alcohol consumption and sale. The…

The New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage (NYSAOWS) was one of the most active anti-suffrage groups in the state of New York. There were several auxiliaries of the group throughout New York. NYSAOWS would receive requests for…

“The Age of Iron” was published by the New York printing firm of Currier and Ives in 1869. It satirized the woman suffrage movement that was gaining widespread support in America during that time.The woman suffrage movement took root in 1848 at the…

As women participated in the movement to abolish slavery during the first half of the 19th century, some of them also began to advocate for women's rights. In July 1848, a group of women and men held a convention in Seneca Falls, New York. They…

Black men in Virginia voted for the first time in October 1867, when they participated in the election on whether to hold a convention to rewrite the state's constitution as required by Congress after the Civil War. They also voted for delegates to…

In October 1859, abolitionist John Brown and a small group of white and Black men slipped across the border between Maryland and Virginia (now West Virginia) with a plan to occupy the federal arsenal, armory, and rifle factory at Harper's Ferry.…

The temperance movement was one of many reform efforts that built support in the decades before the Civil War. Temperance is defined as moderation in action, thought, or feeling, and is often used to describe the long campaign to decrease the…

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…