African American Education

Digital Projects Manuscripts & Special Collections

Ambition: To Be A Success

Ambition: To Be Successful In the 1950s and 1960s it was fashionable to ask high school seniors what their life's ambition was and to place…

Jessi BennettFebruary 4, 2026

Archives The Stacks

“Yours in Utmost Disgust”: Desegregation Letters to the Governor of Virginia

How do archivists describe documents that reflect years of trauma and oppression with sensitivity? What if these documents are inflammatory letters written during an era…

Library of VirginiaJune 5, 2024

Education & Programming Virginia Authors

“Pioneers in American librarianship who happen to be Black”

Brenda Mitchell-Powell’s book Public in Name Only explores the history of racial segregation in Virginia public libraries through the example of the Alexandria library system and…

Library of VirginiaJanuary 23, 2023

Virginia Authors

“She still lives through those to whom she gave her life.”

For the majority of United States' existence as a nation, the focus of academic history has been on the actions and achievements of educated, well-to-do…

Library of VirginiaApril 20, 2022

Archives Education & Programming

Beyond “Mary Bowser”: Researching & Writing a Biography of Black Activism in 19th-Century America

Editor’s Note: The Library of Virginia, in partnership with Virginia Humanities, sponsors residential fellows during the academic year to conduct in-depth research in the Library’s…

Lois LeveenFebruary 2, 2022

Digital Projects Manuscripts & Special Collections

The Way We Were: Virginia High School Yearbooks

Last Friday we took a look at some of the ways that Virginia high school yearbooks have celebrated their graduates in the past, but there…

Jessi BennettJune 4, 2021

Digital Projects Manuscripts & Special Collections

Please Hold Your Applause Till the End: A Virginia Digital Yearbook Collection Update

The high school classes of 2020 and 2021 will always stand out for their unique senior year experience. We’ve had to invent new ways to…

Jessi BennettMay 28, 2021

Digital Projects

“She was, before her marriage, an accomplished teacher.”

Sometimes after a long day of looking at archival documents on my computer screen, I go home and relax by looking at archival documents on…

Jessi BennettMarch 24, 2021

Archives Newspapers

‘Recreational warriors’ of the Gridiron: The Olympia Football Squad

Since 1967, Americans have been gathering around their televisions at this time of year to watch the pugnacity and pageantry that is the National Football…

Vince BrooksFebruary 3, 2021

Digital Projects Public Libraries

Public Library Spotlight: A Preservation Partnership

This is a post in our new series highlighting the people and programs of the public libraries of Virginia. To view more posts about our…

Jessi BennettApril 13, 2020

Archives Digital Projects

Kaine Email Project @LVA: Oliver Hill

This is the ninth in a series of posts spotlighting recently released email from Governor Tim Kaine’s administration. These posts are not meant to be comprehensive but to…

Roger ChristmanJune 22, 2015

Education & Programming Manuscripts & Special Collections

Jacob Yoder and Educating Virginia’s Freedpeople after the Civil War

This is the second in a series of four blog posts concerning post-Civil War Virginia and the lives of freedpeople after Emancipation. The posts precede…