This article in the March 26, 1875, issue of the Richmond Daily Dispatch covers the completion of Edward Valentine’s Recumbent Lee statue. The reporter describes Valentine’s work on the statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee and crowds visiting Valentine’s studio to see the finished piece. Recumbent Lee is now located in the chapel at Washington and Lee University.
This article, published February 3, 1876, in the Daily Dispatch, reports on a meeting of Black leaders in Richmond planning to open a vocational school for Black children in the city. The first statewide system of free public schools in Virginia was established in 1870 after the ratification of a new state constitution. In spite of protests by African American members of the General Assembly, the system segregated Black and white students. Public schools for Black students were often small, overcrowded, and poorly equipped. In the absence of a quality public education, Black communities across the state established private schools for their children like the Moore Street Industrial School.
This article, published November 8, 1871, by the Daily Dispatch, describes Anna Whitehead Bodeker’s attempt to vote in local Richmond elections in the autumn of 1871. Election judges refused to accept her vote. Women did not win the right to vote until the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920.
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