Virginia

In many ways, the story of bondage in Virginia is the story of the state itself...

Richmond's 15th Street was known as Wall Street in antebellum times, and like its New York counterpart, it was a center of commerce. But the business done here was unspeakable and the scene heart wrenching. With over sixty-nine slave dealers and auction houses, the Wall Street area saw tens of millions of dollars and countless human lives change hands, fueling the southern economy. Local historian and author Jack Trammell traces the history of the city's slave trade, from the origins of African slavery in Virginia to its destruction at the end of the Civil War. Stories of seedy slave speculators and corrupt traders are placed alongside detailed accounts of the economic, political and cultural impact of a system representing the most immense, concentrated human suffering in our nation's history.

Through a fascinating narrative and stunning vintage photographs, readers will discover the struggles and triumphs of the African Americans of Hampton Roads.

It was in Hampton Roads, Virginia, that hundreds gained their freedom. The teeming wharves were once a major station on the Underground Railroad, and during the Civil War, escaped slaves such as Shepard Mallory, Frank Baker and James Townsend fled to Fort Monroe to become contrabands under the protection of General Benjamin Butler. Upon arrival in the region, many took up arms for the Union, and the valiant deeds of some placed them among the first African American Medal of Honor recipients. Join Professor Cassandra L. Newby-Alexander as she charts the history of this remarkable African American community from the Civil War to Reconstruction.

Richmond is a classic Southern city, most notable as the Confederate capitol. However, the irony of Richmond is that much of its beautiful architecture was built by Black laborers.

The city's vast and varied collection of architecture provides an archive of African American history, both of enslaved and free peoples. Author Selden Richardson explains how iconic symbols of old Richmond and the generations of Black laborers who helped assemble it are embodied in both the preserved and the forgotten architecture of the city. After you finish this book, it will be as if the buildings in Richmond tell their own stories to you.

A part of the Underground Railroad, read here of enslaved people and their stories of using Virginia's waterways to achieve freedom.

Enslaved Virginians sought freedom from the time they were first brought to the Jamestown colony in 1619. Acts of self-emancipation were aided by Virginia's waterways, which became part of the network of the Underground Railroad in the years before the Civil War. Watermen willing to help escaped slaves made eighteenth-century Norfolk a haven for freedom seekers. Famous nineteenth-century escapees like Shadrack Minkins and Henry "Box" Brown were aided by the Underground Railroad. Enslaved men like Henry Lewey, known as Bluebeard, aided freedom seekers as conductors, and black and white sympathizers acted as station masters. Historian Cassandra Newby-Alexander narrates the ways that enslaved people used Virginia's waterways to achieve humanity's dream of freedom.

Nannie Berger Hairston was a crusader for justice in twentieth-century Virginia.

Nannie Berger Hairston was born in West Virginia in 1921, half a century after the end of the Civil War. She attended segregated schools, graduated, married and started a family. When Nannie’s husband, John, lost his job in the coal mine, the Hairstons moved to Southwest Virginia. It was the height of Jim Crow, and yet, against great odds, she and John became leaders in the community, advocating for civil rights and social justice. Nannie Hairston’s advice was sought by the powerless as well as the powerful. At the time of her death in 2017, she had taken her place as an icon for truth, justice and love.

Local author Sheree Scarborough uses Nannie Hairston’s own words to tell her story.

A Hidden History of Unequal Access

During the Jim Crow era, many public libraries were segregated. The public library plays a fundamental role in communities by providing free educational resources, boosting literacy and knowledge, and serving as a place of refuge. Despite this, many were inaccessible to Black residents and continued to resist integration even after the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education. Discover the truth about the barriers imposed on the Black community and learn about the citizens-turned-activists who used protests and lawsuits to achieve more equitable library services. Their legacy resonates today as libraries continue to evolve and embrace more inclusive practices.

Join Fairfax County librarians Chris Barbuschak and Suzanne LaPierre as they investigate the overlooked and little-known history of segregated library services in Northern Virginia.

America has an array of women writers who have made history--and many of them lived, died and were buried in Virginia.(/b>

Gothic novelists, writers of Westerns and African American poets, these writers include a Pulitzer Prize winner, the first woman writer to be named Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia and the first woman to top the best-seller lists in the twentieth century. Mary Roberts Rinehart was a bestselling mystery author often called "the American Agatha Christie." Anne Spencer was an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance. V. C. Andrews was so popular that when she died a court ruled that her name was taxable, and the poetry of Susan Archer Talley Weiss received praise from Edgar Allan Poe.

Professor and cemetery history enthusiast Sharon Pajka has written a guide to their accomplishments in life and to their final resting places.

Author and researcher Char McCargo Bah recounts the stories of the men and women buried in Alexandria's freedman's cemetery and the search for their descendants.

At the beginning of the Civil War, Federal troops secured Alexandria as Union territory. Former slaves, called contrabands, poured in to obtain protection from their former masters. Due to overcrowding, mortality rates were high. Authorities seized an undeveloped parcel of land on South Washington Street, and by March 1864, it had been opened as a cemetery for African Americans. Between 1864 and 1868, more than 1,700 contrabands and freedmen were buried there. For nearly eighty years, the cemetery lay undisturbed and was eventually forgotten. Rediscovered in 1996, it has now been preserved as a monument to the courage and sacrifice of those buried within.

With a forward by Elizabeth Thalhimer Smartt, learn about William Thalhimer's elaborate plan to save Jewish Germans from Hitler and the Third Reich.

During Hitler's rise to power in the 1930's, Richmond department store founder, William Thalhimer and his family traveled to Germany to visit relatives and business contacts. Thalhimer was deeply disturbed and increasingly alarmed as the anti-Semitism that he and his family witnessed escalated into the violence Brown Shirts and Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. Thalhimer became determined to aid Jews fleeing from Germany, and he eventually met a representative of Gross Breesen, a German-Jewish agricultural training institute. The mission of Gross Breesen, and eventually Thalhimer, was to train young Jews in agriculture in hopes that the expertise gained would ensure the students' successful emigration from Germany. Thalhimer purchased a farm, Hyde Farmlands, in Burkeville, Virginia to give the students a home in Virginia.