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A free African American before the Civil War, William Breedlove won election in 1867 to a convention called to rewrite Virginia's state constitution.

Essex

Born into slavery, John Wesley Cromwell went on to become an attorney, educator, and publisher of the People's Advocate.

Portsmouth and Norfolk County

Born into slavery, Fields Cook became a prominent African American leader in Richmond and Alexandria in the aftermath of the Civil War.

Richmond and Alexandria

An enslaved man, Blind Billy was a renowned Lynchburg fifer.

Lynchburg

After his family was suddenly sold out of the state in 1848, he shipped himself in a wooden crate to freedom in 1849.

Richmond

With "a decided taste for freedom," Sara Lucy Bagby was embroiled in a celebrated legal case that tested the infamous Fugitive Slave Act during the secession crisis.

Wheeling

Mary Smith Kelsey Peake was an educator of both free and enslaved African Americans prior to and during the Civil War.

Hampton

Dangerfield Newby was one of five African Americans who took up arms against slavery with fellow abolitionist John Brown at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in October 1859.

Culpeper County