This first affair in 1854 was mainly a livestock exhibition hosted by the Virginia State Agricultural Society. The State Fair of Virginia has evolved!
Browsing: Richmond History
Fifteen years before Rosa Parks sparked the modern Civil Rights movement, a young Black lawyer opened a law practice in Richmond. Born in this city in 1907, Oliver Hill had grown…
In 1886, the Shriners – also known as the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine – established a Richmond chapter called Acca Temple. A secret society…
After World War II, the federal GI Bill prompted a vast suburban expansion across the nation. Here in our region, cheap, subsidized tract housing lured many white Richmonders from the…
After seizing power in Germany in 1933, the Nazis instituted a slew of anti-Jewish decrees designed to remove Jews from economic and social life. By 1935, with the passage of…
The Virginia Constitution of 1869 established a statewide system of free public schools. The schools evolved in the 1900s with both Jim Crow restrictions and Progressive Era reforms. Even progressive movements, though, were rife with racism, and Black activists rarely had a…
The resort area of Virginia Beach became an incorporated town in 1906, but travelers had gravitated to the beach since electrification and rail service arrived in the late 1880s. In…
World War II introduced new opportunities for women in the military and on the home front, although it was not the first time in history women assisted with war efforts.…
Author Sadeqa Johnson’s novel, “Yellow Wife,” found her while she was exploring the history of the slave trade in Richmond. Read this award-winning work today.
In 1938, during the Great Depression and in the shadow of Jim Crow, a group of Black mothers in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, founded an organization to create educational, cultural, civic, and…
In 1929, a fantastic Richmond holiday tradition was born: the Christmas Toy Parade. Every year, just after Thanksgiving, families gathered on Broad Street to watch floats, bands, clowns, and local…
Connie Matthews Harshaw is thrilled that Colonial Williamsburg archaeologists are beginning their excavation to find the original structure of First Baptist Church, one of the country’s oldest churches founded entirely…
