Historical Significance Virginia Union University is one of the six historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in Virginia. The school that would become Virginia Union was founded by the American Baptist Home Missionary Society and the…

Historical Significance Virginia State University was the first state-supported African American college in America. Virginia State University was charted in 1882 as the "Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute" to fulfill a pledge to the…

Historical Significance Virginia's state capitol was designed by Thomas Jefferson in 1785. In part prompted by the Nat Turner rebellion, the General Assembly spent much of its December 1831 session debating the possible abolition of slavery.…

Historical Significance The "Virginia Randolph Cottage" was the office used by educator Virginia Estelle Randolph (1874-1958). In 1908, Randolph, a Henrico County training school instructor and daughter of parents born enslaved, was appointed the…

Historical Significance The educational institution now known as Virginia College and Virginia Seminary is one of several Virginia schools of higher education founded in the late nineteenth century to help bring the state's blacks into the…

Historical Significance Until the 1960s, "Vinegar Hill" was a large African American neighborhood located in Charlottesville just west of the city's present-day Downtown Mall. The origins of the district's name have become obscured among varying…

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 Uniontown, a small African American community located east of Staunton, was settled predominately by African Americans immediately after the Civil War. The community included the former Federal Cemetery (known today as the…

Historical Significance The Truxtun Historic District was the nation's first wartime government housing project constructed exclusively for blacks. Named for the naval hero Thomas Truxtun (1755-1822), Truxtun is a forty-two acre neighborhood of 250…

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.…