Browse Items (224 total)

Virgnia has a long history of growing peanuts. In the 1700’s, enslaved people from West Africa cultivated peanuts in Virginia. For those unfamiliar with peanuts at the time, they were a curiosity, and farmers used them to feed animals. Peanut plants…

Radio waves were harnessed to send the first transatlantic wireless transmission in 1901, revolutionizing communication throughout the world. Some entrepreneurs saw a future for widely transmitting voice and music over radio, and by the 1910s…

This application for a marriage license was used after Virginia's General Assembly passed the Racial Integrity Act in 1924. On the form, individuals had to indicate that he or she was not "a habitual criminal, idiot, imbecile, hereditary epileptic or…

In 1924, Virginia's General Assembly passed the Racial Integrity Act, which was designed to stop the “intermixture” of white and Black people. The act banned interracial marriage by requiring marriage applicants to identify their race as "white,"…

What is known as the Progressive Movement in the United States lasted from the late 19th century until the 1940s. While many positive social reforms occurred, there were also laws enacted in which people who were thought to be “inferior” in some way…

After the U.S. Supreme Court determined in 1896 that “separate but equal” was not unconstitutional in Plessy v. Ferguson, southern state legislatures passed a flurry of segregation laws. In truth, Virginia had already begun codifying segregation in…

John Mitchell Jr., was the determined and pioneering force behind the success of the Richmond Planet newspaper. Mitchell was born into slavery at Laburnum near Richmond on July 11, 1863. He was the son of John Mitchell and Rebecca Mitchell, who were…

Maggie Lena Mitchell Walker was an entrepreneur, a banker, and a community leader. In 1903, she was the first African American woman to establish a bank in the United States, the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank, in Richmond. She was also the first…

At the turn of the twentieth century, the call for Prohibition had become a national issue, espoused by many politicians and pushed by several strong organizations. The American Temperance Society, started in 1826, acted as a support group for…

The legislation authorizing Virginia’s first statewide public school system in 1870 required that schools be racially segregated. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) upheld southern segregation laws as long as facilities…