Historical Significance Uptown, located at the western edge of Alexandria, started as a cluster of homes before the Civil War. Much smaller than the city's older black communities, the Bottoms and Hayti, Uptown was the first black neighborhood…

Historical Significance Tinner Hill, site of the first rural chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), is named for Charles and Mary Tinner, an African-American couple who bought land there in the late 1800s.…

Historical Significance Born enslaved in 1862, Thomas Calhoun Walker became one of the first African Americans to practice law in Gloucester County. Mr. Walker's many achievements are summarized on a marker in front of his home which reads "Here…

Historical Significance The efforts of African American students at Robert Russa Moton High School in Prince Edward County to achieve equal educational opportunities led to the end of legal segregation in the public schools of America. Built to…

Historical Significance The Robert Robinson Library was the first public library built exclusively for African Americans in Alexandria. It was built in 1940 as a way of forestalling integration of the existing library on Queen Street, built just…

Historical Significance In 1878, Judge J.D. Coles tried to use his authority to exclude blacks from serving as grand and petit jurors in the Pittsylvania County courthouse. Judge Coles was arrested and charged with a violation of the Civil Rights…

Historical Significance In the 1960s, the Petersburg Public Library became the focus of the Civil Rights Movement in Petersburg when two black ministers, Wyatt Tee Walker and R.B. Williams, were arrested for entering the main room of the library.…

Historical Significance All African-American students in Lynchburg attended the Jackson Street High School, founded in 1881. The African-American community petitioned for a new school, and in 1920 the school board agreed to undertake the project.…

Historical Significance On July 16, 1944, Irene Morgan (1917-2007), an African American native of Gloucester County, Virginia, was a passenger on a Greyhound bus traveling from the Old Hayes Store in Gloucester County to Baltimore, Maryland. A short…

Historical Significance Norview High School was one of the six schools in Norfolk attended by members of the "Norfolk 17" in 1958. In the face of the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision, 151 African American students applied to transfer…