Virginia Vignettes

Brafferton was the College of William and Mary’s school for American Indians, after Harvard likely the second oldest in British North America. The College’s 1693 charter provided that the new “place of universal study” educate not only English but also American Indian youth. College founder James Blair arranged financing using income from Brafferton Manor in [...]

Although the College of William and Mary had been chartered in 1693, it was competition among the Protestant churches in the 18th and 19th centuries that contributed to advances in higher education in Virginia. Each denomination had to have a college, primarily for the instruction of its ministers. Following the lead of the Presbyterians, who [...]

The Morrill Land-Grant Act transformed American education, establishing what became a network of state-run colleges and universities combining practical and academic teaching. Two Virginia universities owe their beginnings to it, and a third benefited as well.
Proposed by Rep. Justin Morrill (Vermont), it passed Congress in 1859 but President Buchanan vetoed it. Enacted in 1862 under [...]

With no statewide public education system before the Civil War, the Underwood Constitution of 1868 mandated public schools. Over the objections of the traditionalists, one of whom labeled universal education a “Yankee error,” the new system was created in 1870 with enthusiastic support from freedpeople, poor whites, and middle-class groups, the very people for whom there [...]

Besides being a University of Virginia graduate, Richmond lawyer, historian and genealogist, he was the 14th of U.S. president John Tyler’s 16 children. Tyler’s most important achievement, however, was the resuscitation of the College of William and Mary following the Civil War. The school had been dormant nearly seven years due to war damage and [...]

For one solid century, from 1866 to 1966, Christiansburg Institute provided education, inspiration, and community for African Americans working to better themselves in the face of adversity. Located in southwest Virginia’s Montgomery County, Christiansburg Institute was founded in 1866 by Captain Charles Schaeffer, an agent of the Quaker Freedmen’s Bureau. It was the first school [...]

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 [...]

Traditional racial attitudes were certainly a factor in the creation of massive resistance. Age-old customs and attitudes that had been legalized for half a century were challenged by the Brown decision of 1954. The loudest voices defending the overturned separate-but-equal policy came from the Southside, where the black percentage of the population was highest and [...]

By virtue of service and power, Harry Flood Byrd Sr. was the most prominent Virginian of the twentieth century. As a state senator, governor, and U.S. senator, Byrd made notable contributions to his state and nation, but it was through his leadership of the Democratic political organization–the “Byrd machine”–that he wielded the authority that shaped [...]

Opposition to President Harry Truman’s civil rights proposals caused many Southerners to join a National States Rights Party and nominate Governor Strom Thurmond of South Carolina for president in 1948. These “Dixiecrats” hoped to unite the South behind Thurmond and throw the election into the House of Representatives. Not wanting to jeopardize the election prospects of Virginia [...]