In “‘Loyal’ War Claims,” published on February 3, 1879, the New York Times turns against southern Unionists seeking claims for damage done by Union armies during the American Civil War (1861–1865), calling them “skulkers and sneaks.”
In “A Dastardly Crime,” published on July 14, 1898, the Staunton Spectator and Vindicator reports on the recent lynching in Charlottesville of John Henry James, an African American man accused of assaulting a white woman.
The Cohabitation Act of 1866, passed by the General Assembly on February 27, 1866, legalized the marriages of formerly enslaved people in Virginia and declared their children to be legitimate.
In “An Englishman’s Visit to Capt. R. E. Lee,” published in the June 1915 issue of the Confederate Veteran, Gerald Smythe, a Confederate enthusiast, recounts time he spent with Robert E. Lee Jr. in 1909.
In “Another Virginia Lynching,” published on July 16, 1898, the Richmond Planet reports on the lynching of John Henry James, an African American man accused of assaulting a white woman, Julia Hotopp.
This article in the Richmond Times, published on June 19, 1892, details the case of Thomas’s Administrator v. Bettie Thomas Lewis, in which the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals upheld a decision by the Richmond City Court of Chancery to honor the deathbed wishes of William A. Thomas.
This short article from the Roanoke Times (March 10, 1891) describes an incident in which someone dropped off several issues of the Roanoke Weekly Press, Roanokeꞌs first black newspaper, at police headquarters. This act was a response to a police campaign against black “vagrants” and African American saloons and eating-houses in Gainsboro, which resulted in numerous arrests as well as accusations of police brutality from black residents.
In this broadside, titled “Coalition Rule in Danville” and published in various places in October 1883, a group of twenty-eight white businessmen complain about Readjuster rule in the city in general and African Americans in particular. The so-called Danville Circular and responses to it helped raise tensions in Danville ahead of the Danville Riot, which left at least five people dead on November 3, 1883.
In its editorial “Frivolous Reasons,” published on June 11, 1898, the Richmond Planet makes the case for African American officers leading African American soldiers in the militia and in the volunteer regiments called to duty during the Spanish-American War (1898). The paper’s editor, John Mitchell Jr., responds directly to arguments made in an editorial published by the Richmond Dispatch on June 5.
In “From an Eye Witness,” published in the Charlottesville Daily Progress on July 16, 1898, the editor of the Waynesboro Herald describes the lynching four days earlier of John Henry James, an African American man.
