Browse Items (224 total)
Governor Stanley's Address to Virginians after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education Decision, May 17, 1954
On May 17, 1954, after nearly two decades of legal challenges against racial segregation in public schools and higher education, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas that school segregation was…
Guide Map of Shenandoah National Park, Map, 1937
In 1924, the federal government began looking for land in the southern Appalachian Mountains to create a large national park which would be easily accessible to cars and hikers. Shenandoah National Park opened in 1936 and was officially completed in…
Harry F. Byrd, Painting on Canvas, 1947
Harry Flood Byrd (1887–1966) served as state senator from 1915 to 1926, governor from 1926 to 1930, and as a United States Senator from 1933 to 1965. Byrd hailed from Winchester, Virginia, and came from a prominent and politically connected family.…
Helps For Homemakers Booklet, ca. 1943–1945
During World War II booklets were published to assist homemakers 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 Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive…
Henry Box Brown and his Anti-Slavery Panorama, 1851
Henry Box Brown gained fame after escaping slavery in Richmond in 1849. Although many others self-emancipated to freedom, Brown is the only person documented to have shipped himself to freedom. He used his fame to speak out against slavery as a…
High School Attitudes Towards Prohibition, 1930
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…
Hiram Bartee, Indictment for Abolitionism, Scott County, 1859
In October 1859, white abolitionist John Brown led an armed raid on the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), in an attempt to overthrow the system of slavery. Sixteen people died in the raid. Brown and six of his…
Home Rule and Local Self Government During Prohibition, 1914
After the Civil War, the temperance movement swept the nation. Starting with Maine in 1851, states and localities around the country held referendums to let its citizens vote on whether or not to ban alcohol. In 1886, Virginia adopted the “Local…
Honor Dr. King, Broadside, 1970
Despite the ratification of both the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments that granted all adult citizens in the United States the right to vote, many eligible Black voters in southern states were systematically blocked from participating in the…
Hurricane Recovery in Tidewater Virginia: A Partial Report on Red Cross Relief and Rehabilitation in the Area Damaged by Wind and Tidal Wave, 1933
The Atlantic hurricane season officially begins on June 1 and ends November 30, with the season’s peak occurring between August and October. During the very active hurricane season of 1933, the Chesapeake-Potomac Hurricane hit coastal Virginia on…