Virginia Vignettes

African Americans’ Great Migration unfolded over generations; all told, roughly from 1910 to 1970, some five million Black Southerners left the region. Though Virginia was an important scene of this drama, the African-American departure from the Commonwealth began centuries earlier. The internal slave trade, tearing thousands of families asunder at the auction blocks, [...]

Danville’s Wendell Scott, born in 1921, was the first – and remains the only – African-American to win a top-level NASCAR race. He began as a taxi driver, mechanic, and legendary moonshine runner. After military service during World War II, he began racing, and winning, on the old Dixie Circuit and local outlaw [...]

Hampton University students and alumni fondly refer to “My Home by the Sea,” evoking its picturesque setting at the edge of the Hampton River. Among the most prestigious of historically black colleges and universities, it began after the Civil War as Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute. As with other HBCU’s, it arose out [...]

When the English arrived in Virginia in 1607, Powhatan, whose informal name was Wahunsunacock, was the acknowledged paramount chief of more than 32 tribes, with more than 150 towns. These tribes ranged from the Potomac River in the north to just south of the James River in the south, and from the fall line of [...]