This text examines interracial sexual relationships under slavery. While laws militated against interracial sex in Virginia before the Civil War it was ubiquitous throughout the state. The customery toleration of sex across the colour line both supported and undermined racism.

Pres. Franklin Roosevelt's establishment of the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1933 had lasting conservation impacts across the nation. Virginia joined this effort when Will Carson of the Virginia Conservation Commission convinced Roosevelt to use the Civilian Conservation Corps to build a state park system. Virginia is distinguished as the only state in the nation to open a system of state parks on one day. On June 15, 1936, the first six state parks--Douthat,...

In this provocative reinterpretation of one of the best-known events in American history, Woody Holton shows that when Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and other elite Virginians joined their peers from other colonies in declaring independence from Britain, they acted partly in response to grassroots rebellions against their own rule.The Virginia gentry's efforts to shape London's imperial policy were thwarted by British merchants and by a coalition...

"In 1619, a group of thirty-two African men, women and children arrived on the shores of Virginia. They had been kidnapped in the royal city of Kabasa, Angola, and forced aboard the Portuguese slave ship San Juan Bautista. The ship was attacked by privateers, and the captives were taken by the English to their New World colony. This group has been shrouded in controversy ever since. Historian Ric Murphy documents a fascinating story of colonialism,...

BY: Robert Armistead Stewart, Orig. Pub. 1934, Reprinted 2021, 279 pages, Index, soft cover, ISBN #978-1-63914-039-8. This book is broken up into two main sections. The first is a general history of the organization along with its exploits. The second section is an alphabetical roster of its officers and enlisted men. These entries of the roster include, wherever possible, rank or status of officers and others, names of vessels served upon, length...

In 1920, Virginia's General Assembly refused to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution to grant women the vote. Virginia's suffragists lost. Or did they? When the thirty-sixth state ratified the amendment, women gained voting rights across the nation. Virginia suffragists were a part of that victory, although their role has been nearly forgotten. They marched in parades, rallied at the state capitol, spoke to crowds on street...

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 Shadrach Minkins and Henry "Box" Brown were aided...

Once thought of as Indian hunting grounds with no permanent inhabitants, West Virginia is teeming with evidence of a thriving early native population. Todays farmers can hardly plow their fields without uncovering ancient artifacts, evidence of at least ten thousand years of occupation. Members of the Fort Ancient culture resided along the rich bottomlands of southern West Virginia during the Late Prehistoric and Protohistoric periods. Lost to time...

Throughout the colonial and antebellum periods, Virginia's tobacco producers exploited slave labor to ensure the profitability of their agricultural enterprises. In the wake of the Civil War, however, the abolition of slavery, combined with changed market conditions, sparked a breakdown of traditional tobacco culture. Focusing on the transformation of social relations between former slaves and former masters, Jeffrey Kerr-Ritchie traces the trajectory...