This Week in Virginia History: Recent Episodes
Virginia Audio Collective
Sure, Virginia history includes big moments, big battles, and big names. But the richer history is full of smaller events occurring in the fullness of time. The disenfranchised, the nonconformists, and just regular people making Virginia history. Week in, week out. This Week in Virginia History explores those stories, curated by Nathan Moore and culled from the vast archives at Encyclopedia Virginia.
Episode NotesThis week in 1912, Virginia experienced a debilitating six-week cold snap, the longest and most severe in state history. Snow and plummeting temperatures contributed to train wrecks, water shortages, and even exploding water tanks.
This podcast is powered by Pinecast.
Episode NotesThis week in 1936, as a part of a national program collecting the stories of former enslaved people, reporter Claude Anderson talked with 87-year old Richard Slaughter. Slaughter had been born into an enslaved family in Virginia, but fled to freedom during the Civil War. During the interview, Slaughter recalled an encounter with none other than Abraham Lincoln.
This podcast is powered by Pinecast.
Episode NotesThis week in 1864, the Union army destroyed the Confederate salt mines in Saltville, a blow to the Confederate army that marked a turning point in the Civil War.
This podcast is powered by Pinecast.
Episode NotesThis week in 1974, Mills Godwin became the first and only Virginia governor elected for two (nonconsecutive) terms -- and he ran on different political tickets each time. He's often remembered for bolstering Virginia's public schools and creating the state's community college system. However, he played a darker role in Virginia's education policy as well. As senator and lieutenant governor, Godwin had been instrumental in the massive resistance laws that prevented school integration.
This podcast is powered by Pinecast.
Episode NotesThis week in 1769... when the House of Burgesses sponsored at ball at Williamsburg’s capitol building, Virginian women shunned fine Bristish fabrics and showed up in homespun gowns. This was seen as a patriotic act of defiance, and inspired women all over America to wear homespun in protest of British policies.
This podcast is powered by Pinecast.
Episode NotesThis week in 1710... a prominent Virginia politician meets a grisly end. Daniel Parke quickly ascended to the Virginia House of Burgesses and the Governor's Council, before being awarded governorship of the Leeward Islands. But despite his political successes, his difficult personality won him enemies.
This podcast is powered by Pinecast.
Episode Notes This week in 1786... James Lafayette submitted a petition for his freedom from enslavement. During the American Revolution, Lafayette's espionage helped lead Americans to victory against the British. But despite his wartime contributions, the Virginia General Assembly rejected his petition. It was only after enlisting the help of the Marquis de Lafayette that James Lafayette was granted his freedom.
This podcast is powered by Pinecast.
Episode Notes This week in 1949... as automobiles took over America's roads, Richmond officials destroyed the last of their electric streetcars, which had roamed Richmond's streets for more than 60 years.
This podcast is powered by Pinecast.
Episode Notes This week in 1805... a year and a half after leaving St. Louis, Virginians Lewis and Clark and their "Corps of Discovery" reached the Pacific Ocean.
This podcast is powered by Pinecast.
Episode Notes This week in 1775... Lord Dunmore promised freedom to all indentured servants and enslaved people who fought for the British against the American revolutionaries.
Episode Notes This week in 1870... Virginia created a state-wide system of free public schools.
Episode Notes This week in 1867, Unionist John B. Eastham resigns just days after his election to the Constitutional Convention in Richmond.
Episode Notes This week in 1944... In MMiddlesex County, Virginia, Irene Morgan refuses to sit at the back of the bus.
Episode Notes This week in 1861, Richmond opened Chimborazo Hospital. With 150 buildings and capacity of up to 3600 patients, it was the largest hospital in the south at the time.
Episode Notes This week in 1842... George and Rebecca Latimer escaped slavery in Virginia. Their story and the challenges they faced inspired the 1843 Liberty Law, which forbid Massachusetts officers to arrest, detain, or deliver any fugitive slave back to their enslaver.
Episode Notes This week in 1856... Eyre Crowe's illustrations of Richmond auction houses spread awareness of the horrors of the domestic slave trade.
Episode Notes This week in 1893... after a white woman made allegations against him, Thomas Smith became targeted by a mob of white people in Roanoke. Smith's name is engraved on a tablet at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Birmingham, Alabama. Learn more about the Memorial, and the brutal history of sanctioned violence against African Americans, at their website: museumandmemorial.eji.org/memorial.
Episode Notes This week in 1663... a group of nine indentured servants attempted to kidnap the Governor to demand their freedom. But things did not go according to plan.
Episode Notes This week in 1881... The Monticello Wine Company thrived as one of the largest and most prestigious wineries in the South. As business boomed and vintage's won awards, no one could have foreseen such a fiery disaster in the company's future.
Episode Notes This week in 1768... Virginia was in need of a new governor and Narbonne Berkeley, the baron of Botetourt, saw his chance to move up in the world. Despite his allegiance to the Crown, Berkley was the man of the people and quickly rose to local-celebrity status amongst Virginians.
Episode Notes This week in 1864... During the Civil War, the sleepy town of City Point, Virginia became the main supply depot and headquarters for the Union Army. This drew the unwanted attention of the Confederate secret service, who tasked a special agent to wreak as much havoc as possible.
Episode Notes This week in 1907... the state of Virginia honored the 300th anniversary of the Jamestown settlement. In celebration, a grand exposition was held to showcase the artistic and scientific achievements of era. A special appearance by Booker T. Washington helped highlight the voices and history of Black creators.
Episode Notes This week in 1916... Spottswood Robinson III excelled beyond measure as a student at Howard Law School. But graduating at the top of his class and setting a record for the highest grade point average was just a taste of his success yet to come.
Episode Notes This is a special edition of This Week in Virginia History produced for the Cville Puzzle Hunt to be held in Charlottesville on Saturday, August 27, 2022. More info at CvillePuzzleHunt.com.
Episode Notes This week in 1962… Sarah Lee Fain was a woman of firsts. She began her civic career as a teacher in Norfolk and joined the Leagues of Women Voters in 1920. After some encouragement from her friends to run for public office, Sarah's political career took off.
Episode Notes Union General John Pope was well known for his bold and aggressive war tactics. When Abraham Lincoln asked Pope to take charge of the Army of Virginia, the general was more than willing to oblige. But just as he took command, Pope's luck took a turn for the worst.
Episode Notes Grace Sherwood was a midwife, a healer, and a widow. In colonial Virginia, this was a risky combination. As a result, a simple dispute with her neighbors soon put her reputation and her life in grave danger.
Episode Notes This week in 1861... 10th President John Tyler was an avid and public supporter of slavery. Tyler believed that the institution of slavery could be remedied by its expansion to the western territories. In the years following his presidency, Tyler fought viscously for state sovereignty and the rights of slaveholders.
Episode Notes This week in 1893... It was a man’s world at the University of Virginia, but times were changing. Caroline Preston Davis didn’t like the status quo and was determined to make her presence known as an accomplished math scholar.
Episode Notes This week in 1699... Jamestown had been the seat of power since its founding in 1607, but for the House of Burgesses, the smoldering and disease ridden town had become simply unbearable. Seeking a safer, healthier place to govern their budding nation, they set up shop temporarily at Middle Plantation. The end result was the birth of Williamsburg, Virginia.
Episode Notes This week in 1834... Catherine was a free Black woman who owned a bit of land near the University. One evening some rowdy students smashed flower pots and tried to break into her home. At the time, the faculty of the University turned a blind eye towards the incident, but today, Foster's existence is forever memorialized on Grounds.
Episode Notes This week in 1961... You’ve probably seen the famous photograph of Martin Luther King, Jr. at the cell bars in the Birmingham jail. But who was the man behind the camera? He was one of the most influential leaders of the Civil Rights movement and an avid advocate for the inclusion of Black history in public school curriculum.
Episode Notes This week in 1912... Floyd Allen was the head of a clannish mountain family in Carroll County who had a reputation for moonshining, feuding, and violence. When the time finally came for Floyd to face his history of misdemeanors in court, the Allen family was determined to not go down without a fight.
Episode Notes This week in 1864... She was the siren of the Shenandoah. The Cleopatra of the Secession. Teenager Belle Boyd's passion for the cause led her to become an informal spy for the Confederacy during the Civil War. As a informant, Belle employed her innocent looks and girlish charms, slipping out of Union hands time and time again.
Episode Notes This week in 1869... After emancipation, James Holmes rose to soaring new heights. As a politician, he advocated for free public schools and the right to vote for African American men. But these radical reforms prompted ridicule from white conservatives back in his hometown of Charlotte County. Holmes began to fear for his life.
Episode Notes This week in 1893... Sarah Garland Boyd Jones grew up among Richmond's Black elite. As a teacher, she could not ignore the medical disparities in the Black community as compared to the plethora of resources and care offered to the white population. She packed her bags, moved to Washington, D.C., and decided to make a change.
Episode Notes This week in 1956... Irene Langhorne knew she was destined for greatness. Her stars aligned one fateful evening at Delmonico’s restaurant in New York where she met the famous illustrator Charles Dana Gibson. What followed was a passionate love that spurned one of history's best known illustrations of the modern Victorian woman.
Episode Notes This week in 1950... Luther Porter Jackson's love for asking questions led him to become one of the most important scholars of African American history in Virginia. As a teacher, Jackson became aware of the racial stereotypes and Lost Cause narratives permeating the South at the time. In response, he became determined to unearth the stories of Black America.
Episode Notes This week in 1865... After a crushing defeat in Petersburg, General Lee’s battered Confederate troops retreated south to North Carolina. But General Ulysses S. Grant wasn't done yet - he was determined to squash the rebels once and for all. The Union forces chased after the Confederate army, seeking out Lee's official surrender.
Episode Notes This week in 1959... The Brown v. Board decision had so angered Southside Virginia political leaders that they formed the white supremacist group “The Defenders of State Sovereignty and Individual Liberty.” Their ultimate goal was to defeat public school integration. Most Virginians wanted to move past the segregation crisis that had roiled the state for years, but the Defenders decided to make one last stand.
Episode Notes This week in 1622... Ever since Pocahontas married John Rolfe, the Native Americans and English had been at a relative peace with each one another. But then, the tobacco trade exploded. As settlers' plantations began to encroach on Native land, Chief Opechancanough and The Powhatan Confederacy devised a plan to push the English back.
Episode Notes This week in 1781... The 23-year old Marquis de Lafayette had spent a year drumming up French support for the American Revolution. And now he was back in America, full of revolutionary fervor and ready to lead French troops in Virginia.
Episode Notes This week in 1862... After Virginia seceded from the Union, retreating Federal forces scuttled and sank ships in Portsmouth harbor. They didn’t want the ships to fall into Confederate hands. But one did anyway. It was the USS Merrimac. Confederate forces raised it from its watery grave. When the Federal navy heard about the new Confederate threat to Union ships, they responded with their own ironclad: the USS Monitor. These two ships were on a collision course for Hampton Roads...
Episode Notes This week in 1888... The Rev. William Washington Browne worked to transform Richmond's black community. It began with a bank. Browne knew that a Black bank needed to be run by Blacks. Browne applied for and received a charter for the first Black bank in the United States. A year later the bank opened.
Episode Notes This week in 1864... Federal Colonel Ulric Dahlgren felt it was his duty to contribute more to the war effort. He and Brigadier General Hugh Judson Kilpatrick devised a plan to invade Richmond and free Union prisoners there. But nothing went according to plan.
Episode Notes The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 threatened self-emancipated Black people in the northern states. The federal law required the return of escaped slaves from one state to another. And one of the first people caught in its wide net was Shadrach Minkins.
Episode Notes Robert Pleasants was a man of action. He lived his beliefs. As a Quaker, that meant being an anti-slavery activist. So when the Virginia General Assembly debated a bill to provide for public schools Pleasants picked up his pen to write to Thomas Jefferson.
Episode Notes For years, Thomas Jefferson’s grandson Jeff Randolph and his brother-in-law Charles Bankhead had been at loggerheads. Eyewitness accounts differ as to who threw the first blow, but one thing is for sure: Charles stabbed his brother-in-law twice and seriously wounded him.
Episode Notes War fervor was in full swing when the U.S. declared war on Spain in 1898. More than 800 Black Virginians formed the 6th Virginia Volunteer Regiment. The regiment dealt with racism throughout its training, and by the end of the year, things had gone very downhill.
Episode Notes This week in 1872…The “Lost Cause” narrative gathered steam. The chapel at Washington & Lee University was packed with a crowd gathered to hear Confederate general Jubal Early deliver his eulogy on Robert E. Lee. For two and a half hours Early hit on every point of the burgeoning “Lost Cause” narrative.
Episode Notes Thomas Jefferson’s administration was itching to settle beyond the Mississippi River. The plan was simple. James Monroe would go to Paris and try to buy the City of New Orleans from Napoleon. He was authorized to spend $10 million. After a quick boat ride across the Atlantic Monroe reached Paris in April. There he learned that Napoleon had a different idea.
Episode Notes Virginia officially became part of the United States when it ratified the Constitution in 1788. For the next 200 years, only men represented Virginia’s citizens in the U.S. Congress. Until this week in 1993 when Leslie Byrnes became the first woman from Virginia elected to Congress.
Episode Notes This week in 1811... The day after Christmas began with merriment. The Richmond Theatre scheduled two full-length plays to delight the city’s residents. But the theatre was a disaster waiting to happen.
Episode Notes Edith Maxwell came home late one night to find her angry father waiting up. A scuffle ensued. Edith struck her father with her high heeled slipper and he died. She was arrested for murder and became a national sensation overnight.
Episode Notes Martha Washington sat at the end of the curtained bed. She watched the labored breathing of her husband. In the hallway three doctors discussed George’s serious condition in muffled voices. They didn’t think he would last much longer.
Episode Notes This week in 1861... On the eve of the Civil War, the University of Virginia was a Confederate cradle. Even before Virginia left the Union, students broke into the Rotunda to raise the Confederate flag. Students rushed to join the various volunteer regiments that sprang up on grounds. One of these groups became Company G of the 59th Virginia Infantry Regiment. But things didn't go so well.
Episode Notes This week in 1790... The end of the American Revolution brought forth a freedom fervor, but slavery was heavily entrenched in Commonwealth. Plans for outright abolition fell flat. Enter Ferdinando Fairfax, one of the largest slaveholders in his county, who wrote and promoted a plan for gradual emancipation.
Episode Notes He was the terror of the colonial coastline. Better known as the pirate Blackbeard, Edward Teach attacked ships from Virginia to Jamaica. And Virginia Lt. Governor Alexander Spotswood was tired of it. So when the pirate set up a hideout around North Carolina’s Okracoke Island, Spotswood decided to act.
Episode Notes It started as a typical workday for William Breedlove and William Chandler. The free Black men operated a ferry boat across the Rappahannock River. One day, they ferried a black man who turned out to be an escaped slave. And according to Virginia law the penalty for helping a slave escape was to be sold into slavery.
Episode Notes This week in 1828... Virginia-born former slave Lott Cary had saved up and bought his freedom. He felt it was his mission in life to preach the Gospel to Africans. So when the American Colonization Society established the colony of Liberia, Cary emigrated there with other Black families from Virginia.
Episode Notes A decade after the Civil War, a new party formed in Virginia: the Readjuster Party. With both black and white members, the Readjusters worked to reduce state debt, support public education for African-Americans, and end the poll tax.
Some white Virginians felt threatened... and they used a violent incident to subvert the Readjusters' power.
Episode Notes This week in 1913... A sea of humanity blocked the streets around Richmond’s First Baptist Church. They hoped to catch a glimpse of Daniel Webster Davis’ funeral cortege. Davis was a giant in Richmond’s African American community -- a lifelong educator, organization builder, poet, and pastor.
Episode Notes This week in 1921... Swarms of Confederate veterans made their way into Charlottesville. It was the annual Virginia veterans’ reunion replete with picnics and receptions. And this year had an extra draw -- the unveiling of a new monument to General Stonewall Jackson in the newly minted, whites-only Jackson Park.
Episode Notes This week in 1851... Joseph Abrams walked up to the Richmond courthouse. Today he was manumitting his slaves. All nine of them. But this was no ordinary transaction. And Joseph Abrams was no ordinary man. Only seven years earlier he himself had been enslaved.
Episode Notes This week in 1918... A century before the COVID-19 pandemic that we’re all intimately familiar with, a deadly influenza ravaged the nation and the world. Near the end of World War I, it began in Virginia on army bases, and soon spread throughout the state. As illnesses grew and grew, it hit Charlottesville and Albemarle County hard in early October.
Episode Notes This week in 1760... Children excitedly entered the small white building in Williamsburg. It was the first day of school. But this wasn’t any regular school. This was the Bray school for free and enslaved Black children. The first of its kind in Virginia.
Episode Notes Today in 1914... At 6am the bells rang in Charlottesville’s Presbyterian Church. They rang every hour on the hour until 6pm. A reminder to voters that it was Election Day. And not just any old regular election day. Today voters decided in a special referendum if Virginia would become a dry state. Prohibition.
Episode Notes Rude. Cantankerous. Arrogant. These were just a few of the many adjectives that professors and students used to describe modern languages professor George Blaettermann. But his arrival at the University of Virginia had started with such high hopes.
Episode Notes Trouble began when the Doeg Indians raided a Virginia plantation. The colonists retaliated. But they attacked the wrong tribe -- which meant that that tribe retaliated. Before long, large scale raids and attacks were coming from all sides.
Virginia Governor William Berkeley tried to calm everyone down by launching an investigation. But the governor’s cousin Nathaniel Bacon wouldn’t listen. He insisted on fighting the Indians, which Berkeley refused. Bacon got together a group of disgruntled colonists, and a civil war broke out between Berkeley’s loyalists and Bacon’s rebels.
Episode Notes Political pamphleteer James Callender knew how to ruffle feathers. Thomas Jefferson began supporting him and his anti-federalist writings. But Callender went too far and got thrown in jail.
When he got out, he demanded that Jefferson help him out... or else he'd expose Jefferson's secrets.
Episode Notes This week in 1863... During the Civil War, the Confederate government forced free and enslaved Blacks to labor for the Confederate army. They were required to report to the county courthouse where a doctor examined them and determined what work they were fit to do. That’s how James T.S. Taylor ended up in Washington, DC. He was a free Black man from Albemarle County. But he refused to work for the Confederates. So he ran away to Union lines in northern Virginia.
Episode Notes This week in 1969... Hurricane Camille was a category 5 storm when it slammed into the Gulf Coast. Days later, it stalled over Nelson County. Rain fell in buckets for hours, and peaceful mountain creeks quickly became torrents of floods, mud, and rock. Half a century later, it remains the worst natural disaster in Virginia history.
Episode Notes This week in 1900... If you live in Charlottesville, you've probably heard his name... Venable Elementary School and the Venable neighborhood. The man was Charles Scott Venable. And when he died, he was so revered among white Virginians that his obituary was published on the front page of both the Charlottesville Daily Progress and the Richmond Times-Dispatch. That's because he played a key role in constructing the Lost Cause Myth in the years after the Civil War.
Episode Notes This week in 1923… The Virginia Bureau of Vital Statistics opened in 1912, and the man hired to lead this new department was Walter Plecker. Following the passage of Virginia's Racial Integrity Act, Plecker threw himself into enforcing a racialized society, declaring that his office has the greatest power in the state to combat race-mixing.
Episode Notes In 1963, Prince Edward County was the only place in the country without public education. Instead of desegregating their schools, they closed them. For years. Most white students went to private schools, but almost 2,000 black students had no formal education at all.
Then, the students protested on the streets of Farmville.
Episode Notes This week in 1656... Slavery started in the Virginia Colony in 1619. Over the next decades, the question of WHO exactly was considered a slave was in flux. Was slavery determined by social status? Religion? Or by race?
Enter Elizabeth Key, the first enslaved woman in the colonies to sue for her freedom.
Episode Notes The morning train chugged down Afton Mountain. On board was a prisoner named John Henry James. He would not make it to his trial in Charlottesville.
Episode Notes Back in 1929, the town of Covington, Virginia warmly welcomed their new rayon plant. The factory became an essential part of Covington’s economy and employed more than a thousand people. But during the next decade, workers tired of the increased workload and the low pay of just $25 a week.
Workers formed a union and tried to settle the disagreements. But when negotiations fell apart, the union voted to strike.
Episode Notes James Madison slowly sat up in bed. He felt very weak that morning. The sun had just risen, and soon the enslaved maid Sukey would bring him his breakfast from the basement kitchen.
But it irritated him that he couldn’t eat it at the dining table. The eighty-five year old “Father of the Constitution” had been confined to his bed for six months. Rheumatism and liver dysfunction crippled him.
Madison still had animated conversations with his family and visitors. But he knew he wouldn’t last much longer. And he was the last of the Founding Fathers.
Episode Notes War between England and France was in full swing. The United States tried to stay neutral, but the British made that task difficult.
The British ship HMS Leopard intercepted the USS Chesapeake off the coast of Norfolk. The British commander requested to search the Chesapeake for British deserters, which the American captain refused. A few minutes later, the HMS Leopard opened fire.
Episode Notes Fields Cook led the delegation of African American men up the White House stairs. He and four other men had come to Washington to deliver a list of grievances to President Andrew Johnson. The Civil War was over. The enslaved freed. But freedmen were at the mercy of their former enslavers, and no Virginia laws addressed the newly freed African Americans.
Episode Notes George Wythe came down the stairs of his Richmond home to have some breakfast. Suddenly Wythe’s stomach cramped. His fingers and toes tingled. His heart palpitated. Wythe knew this wasn’t a regular illness. He had been poisoned!
Episode Notes This week in 1958... It was a classic love story. Boy meets girl. They fall in love. They get married. But in this story, the girl was Mildred Jeter, a Black woman. And her new husband was a white man named Richard Loving. This was in highly segregated Caroline County and interracial marriage was illegal in Virginia.
Episode Notes This week in 1878... Little Luther Robinson knew he had a bright future before him. Smiles grew on people’s faces as they threw pennies his way. Pennies for dancing in front of a Richmond theatre. Or the beer garden. Or most anywhere he performed. After changing his name to Bill, he moved to Washington, DC, then to New York City. But that was just the beginning...
Episode Notes This week in 1861... Civil War loomed in in America. South Carolina troops had fired on Charleston’s Fort Sumter. President Abraham Lincoln sent reinforcements to Fort Monroe in Hampton, Virginia and put Major General Benjamin Butler in charge. When three enslaved Virginia men escaped and showed up at the fort to take refuge, Gen. Butler wasn't sure what to do at first. He ended up making "Freedom's Fortress."
Episode Notes This week in 1607... A fleet of three ships carrying about 100 intrepid men sailed up the James River. The settlers were part of the Virginia Company chartered by King James I. Their mission: establish the first permanent English settlement in North America. And find some gold. And a water route to the Pacific.
Episode Notes Fitzhugh Lee boarded the last boat from Havana to Florida. The US was about to declare war on Spain. Americans speculated that Lee, a former Confederate cavalry officer and later governor of Virginia, would be put in command of the forces to liberate Cuba. Which didn’t exactly happen. Though he did command an occupying force after the Spanish-American war.
Episode Notes This week in 1870… Hundreds of men crowded into the Supreme Court of Appeals, which was about to announce the verdict of the Richmond Mayoralty Case. The sagging floor of the second floor balcony was far from people’s minds that day. Suddenly a loud crack sounded under their feet.
Episode Notes This week in 1861.. Robert E. Lee paced the room. Events proceeded quickly. And he knew his next decision would change everything for him, his family, and history.
A week ago, Confederates attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina. President Lincoln issued a proclamation and called for a 75,000-man militia to quell the insurrection. Lincoln even asked Virginia to send men and asked Robert E. Lee to take command of the Union Army.
And this is how Lee came to this moment of pensive pacing at Arlington House.
Episode Notes Nat Turner’s Rebellion in 1831 sparked a wave of anti-slavery advocacy in Virginia. At UVA, the Jefferson Society elected Merritt Robinson to deliver a speech at the Founder’s Day celebration in the Rotunda in 1832. Robinson used his speech to argue for the emancipation of slaves in Virginia. He made the case that slavery was a moral wrong by quoting Washington, Jefferson, and other founding fathers. The faculty was outraged.
Episode Notes This week in 1858… John Augustine Washington III paced the halls of Mount Vernon. What was he going to do with this place? The house was falling apart around him. And historical tourism income was not enough to keep up the house.
The next evening, a steam ship chugged up the Potomac. Passenger Louisa Cunningham gazed at Mount Vernon as it slipped by. She was horrified by what she saw and resolved to do something about it.
Episode Notes On a spring morning in 1819, seventeen people loaded two wagons with their luggage, tools, and provisions. They left their Rockfish plantation in Nelson County and travelled over Jarman’s Gap and into the Shenandoah Valley.
Their destination? Illinois. 800 miles away.
But first they had to stop in Pennsylvania to meet up with their slaveholder Edward Coles. Yes, the traveling band of men, women, and children were slaves. And Coles planned to free them.
Episode Notes Picture one of your elderly neighbors or family members. Someone in their 80s. When they were a young adult, they had to pay a poll tax to vote in Virginia. Many southern states established these poll taxes at the turn of the 20th century in order to disenfranchise Black and poor white voters. The Commonwealth of Virginia even wrote the poll tax into its new 1902 constitution.
Episode Notes Joseph Fossett worked at his blacksmith anvil late into the evening with a lot on his mind. Earlier that day, his master Thomas Jefferson had told him that he would be freed one year after Jefferson’s death. But only him and four other enslaved men. Not Joseph’s wife Edith or their children.
Episode Notes While traveling from Philadelphia to Mount Vernon, George Washington sat down to write a letter. He was angry. His enslaved chef Hercules had run away from Mount Vernon, and George wanted him back. In his letter, he asked his friend to search for Hercules. But Hercules had freed himself, and he wouldn't be caught.
Episode Notes The Union army led by Custer -- yes, that Custer of Little Big Horn infamy – arrived in Charlottesville on March 3rd. Town and University officials met him at the bottom of Carr’s Hill with a flag of truce. The Union forces occupied Charlottesville for three days and foraged the countryside for food. And African-Americans flocked to the Union camp.
Over a thousand African-Americans followed Union troops as they left the town and headed toward Scottsville. Today, March 3rd is remembered in Charlottesville as Liberation and Emancipation Day.
Episode Notes Four decades before Dr. King’s I Have a Dream speech… Three decades before Brown versus Board of Education... Gordon Blaine Hancock was a leading spokesman for African American equality and self-determination in the generation before the civil rights movement.
Episode Notes This week in 1851… Fugitive slave Shadrach Minkins was captured in Massachusetts... until a crowd of black activists broke into a Boston courtroom and freed him again.
Episode Notes The U.S. Census of 1860 reported that almost half a million Virginians lived in slavery. Five years later they were all free.
During the Civil War years, many enslaved people freed themselves. Legally speaking, a pro-Union, shadow state government -- the Restored Government of Virginia -- officially abolished slavery in Virginia. But it took the U.S. Army enforcing these measures after the end of the Civil War for most enslaved people to gain their freedom.
Episode Notes For the most part, Virginia's political leaders and business elites opposed lynching. Not out of respect for the rights of African Americans. More because the elites were trying to attract manufacturing and industry. That called for law and order, and lynchings were bad publicity. Two state senators introduced the nation's first anti-lynching law in February 1928.
Episode Notes People don’t much like to talk about the dark history of eugenics these days. But less than 100 years ago, Virginia lawmakers passed the “Eugenical Sterilization Act” in a drive to protect what the state called “the purity of the American race.”
After being raped by her foster nephew and committed to a mental institution, Carrie Buck became the test case for this new sterilization law.
Episode Notes “Crazy.” “I fall to pieces.” “Walking after midnight.” All classic Patsy Cline songs that may have been unknown today if not for a televised talent show competition.
Episode Notes At the beginning of the 20th century, Richmond native James Branch Cabell was a little known author, even though he had already published eleven books. So nobody really expected his twelfth book -- Jurgen – to cause much of a splash. At least until it caught the eye of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice.
Episode Notes Many Virginians know that the city of Richmond burned at the end of the Civil War. But that wasn’t its first time being destroyed by fire. That blaze happened during the Revolutionary War, and by an American traitor to boot.
Episode Notes Born in France and an engineer in Napoleon's army, Claudius Crozet eventually found his way to Virginia, where he became the chief engineer of the Blue Ridge Railroad Company. The company tasked Crozet with connecting Charlottesville to Staunton by railroad. But a rather large obstacle stood in his way – the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Episode Notes December 23, 1783 was an emotional day for George Washington. Crowds cheered for George Washington as he rode to Annapolis, Maryland. Despite their enthusiasm, Washington had one goal in mind – he was resigning as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army. Just three months earlier, the British had finally recognized American independence.
Episode Notes The second greatest leader since Booker T. Washington. The wealthiest African-American woman in the whole country. A supporter of educational and social work. Newspapers glowingly described all of Maggie Lena Walker’s many accomplishments after her death in December 1934. But the story of her rise to a position of public esteem reads like fiction.
Episode Notes Revolution was brewing in Virginia. Royal governor Lord Dunmore took a number of actions that sparked civil unrest, and local militias began to muster. It all led to a battle at a Norfolk bridge.
Episode Notes Guilty of conspiracy. Guilty of inciting an insurrection. And guilty of treason. So were the charges against John Brown after his failed raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry. The sentence – death by hanging.
Episode Notes Nat Turner’s 1831 rebellion horrified white Virginians and scared all of the slaveholding south. Anti-slavery debates erupted in the Virginia Legislature -- and afforded women their first chance to have their voices heard in state politics.
A century ago, the so-called City Beautiful movement was all the rage. The goal was to make cities nice-looking with parks and monuments to by-gone eras. Stockbroker and philanthropist Paul McIntire hired New York artist Henry Shrady to create a huge Robert E. Lee statue for a new whites-only park in downtown Charlottesville.
It was a Sunday morning in late October. Families were walking to church services. University students were slowly rousing from their beds. One early-rising scholar ambled across the UVA Lawn and saw something peculiar. A wisp of smoke rose from the roof of the Rotunda Annex. Suddenly, flames shot from the roof.
After the Civil War, southern states were required to re-write their state constitutions before being admitted back to the union. Virginia counties held elections for representatives to send to the state constitutional convention. It was the first election in which African-American men in Virginia could vote, and Albemarle County voters chose an African-American man named James Taylor as one of its delegates.
It looked like a regular custard dish. Just a nice dessert to give to a friend. But it contained a compartment for secret messages -- a very nice feature for someone smuggling secret information from the heart of the Confederacy into the hands of Union military leaders. That dish belonged to Elizabeth Van Lew, born to a prominent family in Richmond. Her actions during the Civil War left her socially shunned, but later inducted into the U.S. Military Intelligence Hall of Fame.
This week in 1903… The wreck of the Old 97 inspired a popular ballad. For nearly a century, country crooners from Woody Guthrie to Johnny Cash have sang about the wreck of the Old 97. But what was the Old 97? And what happened to it?
This week in 1890… the U.S. Congress seated John Mercer Langston, Virginia’s first African-American representative. A year and a half after the election was stolen from him, Langston won his appeal and began his short term in Congress. He was the first and last African-American Congressman from Virginia for more than 100 years.
This week in 1958… Virginia Governor J. Lindsay Almond ordered the closure of Lane High School and Venable Elementary in Charlottesville.
This week in 1732… Fourth U.S. President James Madison never wrote about his grandfather Ambrose. Which is surprising because Grandpa Ambrose was murdered by his slaves. Or so the court said.
This week in 1849... Charles Stearns and Henry Box Brown published a book with the rather long-winded title: "Narrative of Henry Box Brown, who escaped from slavery, enclosed in a box three feet long, two wide and two and a half high."
This week in 1814… President James and Dolley Madison and their slaves escape the White House as the British invade and burn Washington, DC. As first lady, Dolley Madison had been a much-celebrated hostess. Even today, she is known for rescuing a portrait of George Washington from the fire. But a firsthand account from one of the Madisons' slaves tells a different story.
This week in 1865… The University of Virginia names Charles Venable chair of the mathematics department. But his concerns extended beyond mathematics... For three and a half decades, Venable played a central role in constructing the myth of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy.
This week in 2017... White supremacists rally around the statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville. One of them runs his car through a crowd of counter-protestors, killing one person and injuring at least 19 others.
This week in 1963... Eleven people were arrested in downtown Farmville for parading without a permit. They were demanding an end to segregation and that public schools reopen.