The efforts of Colonial Williamsburg to, in the words of the New York Times, get the past “right” continue to make news. As we noted recently in the EV Blog, Colonial Williamsburg moved the building that housed the Bray School for enslaved and free Black children to a more prominent location in an effort to center the stories […]
Is history set in stone, like a statue, or is it fluid, more evolving process than petrified facts? At EV, we get to see history in motion, as with our entry on the Bray Schools. These schools were founded in Williamsburg and Fredericksburg, as well as in Philadelphia, New York, and Newport, Rhode Island, by the Associates […]
When is a letter revolutionary? That’s the question at the heart of our new entry on the Virginia Committee of Correspondence, the first in EV’s new section on the American Revolution in Virginia. It was 250 years ago this week, on March 12, 1773, that the House of Burgesses created a permanent committee to correspond […]
In October of 2022, with support from a Virginia Humanities grant, descendants of Bethany Veney, an enslaved woman who lived in the Shenandoah Valley prior to the Civil War, gathered in Luray to record themselves reading from her autobiography The Narrative of Bethany Veney, a Slave Woman. Like many enslaved people, Veney labored for several different […]
Barbara Johns is one step closer to Washington, D.C. A sculptor has been selected for the statue destined for the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall portraying Barbara Rose Johns Powell as the teenage Barbara Johns, when she rallied the students at the all-Black Robert Russa Moton High School to walk out in protest of their substandard learning conditions. […]
You don’t have to be a fan of NASCAR to appreciate our new entry on the legendary Danville-born driver Wendell Oliver Scott. Scott was already locally famous as a taxi driver-turned-moonshine runner when he drove a souped-up Ford in his first race at Danville Fairgrounds Speedway in 1952. Despite financial obstacles and continued instances of […]
Encyclopedia Virginia is pleased to present our new entry about the Nottoway Indian Tribe of Virginia, the first in a series of new entries about the history and culture of the eleven officially recognized Virginia Indian tribes—past and present. “EV knew we needed to do a better job of representing the history and culture of Virginia’s tribal […]
How should Virginia commemorate the American Revolution? Whose stories will be told and how as we approach the semiquincentennial in 2026? Why is expanding and complicating the narrative of the Revolution important? These are questions we are asking ourselves at Encyclopedia Virginia as we embark on our new American Revolution project “By the People: The Inclusive Story of […]
It’s a wrap on Encyclopedia Virginia‘s first giving campaign, and we would like to thank everyone who made it a success. Whether you gave a gift, attended our EntryPoint event, told us why EV was meaningful to you, or simply visited the site, we are so grateful for your support and your role in our […]
We’re trying something new at Encyclopedia Virginia and invite you to participate. EV’s mission is to provide a free, reliable multimedia resource that tells the inclusive story of Virginia for those who seek to understand how the past informs the present and future. While we’ve been fortunate and grateful to receive financial support from a […]
In this report, dated May 1864, the Committee on Colored Refugees, who were representatives of the New York Yearly Meeting of Friends, gives its assessment of the needs of the formerly enslaved people escaping behind Union lines and how Quaker charity efforts were meeting them in contraband camps across Virginia, including Alexandria. One of their agents, Harriet Jacobs, wrote her own letter documenting what she saw in Alexandria and Washington, D.C. For Quakers, the abolition of slavery was a moral and religious imperative.
In this letter, dated July 5, 1884, Sarah Stewart, an enslaved domestic at Montpelier, writes to her enslaver, Dolley Madison, reporting that the Orange County sheriff had seized many of the people enslaved by the Madisons to pay their debts. Stewart implores Madison to ask her neighbors to purchase those enslaved people who had been seized to prevent their being permanently separated from their families by slave traders taking part in the domestic slave trade. Ultimately, the enslaved community at Montpelier was largely broken up because of Madison’s financial difficulty.
This article, published in the abolitionist newspaper the Liberator on December 21, 1855, gives an account of the New York state militia mistaking Thomas Downing for a white man of the same name who was trying to escape militia duty, which was required of male citizens between the ages of 18 and 45. At this time, Downing was famous across New York City for his restaurant, community organizing, and activism. The story originally appeared in the New York Evening Post.
This is a published version of the speech that Governor Mills Edwin Godwin Jr. gave in January 1968 proposing that the General Assembly revise the state’s constitution and submit a new document to the voters for ratification. Rather than summoning a constitutional convention, he argued that the legislators should authorize him to appoint a Commission on Constitutional Revision, who would revise the constitution. In November 1970, voters ratified the new constitution.
