1315 Duke Street Alexandria, Virginia
The Freedom House Museum was once part of the headquarters for the largest domestic slave-trading firm in the United States, Franklin and Armfield. Through first-person accounts of enslaved men and women and…
Executive Order 10925 was signed by President John F. Kennedy on March 6, 1961. It required government contractors to “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard…
The Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1901–1902 produced the Virginia Constitution of 1902 that resulted in disenfranchising large numbers of blacks and working-class whites. The 1902 Constitution remained in effect until July 1, 1971.
Included the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which prohibited interracial marriage Public Assemblages Act of 1926, which required all public meeting spaces to be strictly segregated; and a third act, passed in 1930, that defined as black a person who…
The investigative journalist and activist Ida B. Wells spearheaded the anti-lynching movement in the United States. Ida wrote A Red Record (1892), using mainstream white newspapers to document a resurgence of white mob violence, and finding that…
Lynching involves the extralegal punishment of perceived wrongdoing by a mob. Lynching became pervasive in the American South late in the nineteenth century and, at its height, from 1880 to 1930, killed at least eighty-six men in Virginia, all but…
The Anti-lynching law passed after 100 years, and 200 times being presented to the US Congress. Those found guilty of lynching, now a hate crime, could face up to thirty years in prison.
The following was added to the Code of Virginia: 36-96.6. Certain restrictive covenants void; instruments containing such covenants. Any restrictive covenant and any related reversionary interest, purporting to restrict occupancy or ownership of…
(Title XIII of Civil Rights Act of 1968 which was a follow-up to the Civil Rights Act of 1964) act prohibits discrimination by direct providers of housing, such as landlords and real estate companies, as well as other entities, such as…
Prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. The Act prohibited discrimination in public accommodations and federally funded programs.
Senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr. of Virginia promoted the "Southern Manifesto" opposing integrated schools, which was signed in 1956 by more than one hundred southern congressmen. On February 25, 1956, he called for what became known as Massive Resistance.…
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional. On May 17, 1954, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren delivered the unanimous ruling in the landmark civil rights case Brown…
All personnel actions taken by Federal appointing officers shall be based solely on merit and fitness; and such officers are authorized and directed to take appropriate steps to insure that in all such actions there shall be no discrimination because…
A Supreme Court decision that upheld the legality of separate, but equal facilities (white and “colored” water fountains; Blacks were required to ride in the back of public transportation).
The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery and the Fourteenth Amendment gave former slaves the rights of U.S. citizens. The Fifteenth Amendment was added to protect the voting rights of all citizens regardless of race.
