A state historical marker  will be dedicated that highlights the one-time location in Richmond of the Central Lunatic Asylum, the first standalone hospital for African Americans suffering from mental disorders or ill health in the United States. The state later relocated the facility to Dinwiddie County and renamed it Central State Hospital in the late […]

A state historical marker issued by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources will be dedicated that highlights the career of Alleghany County native R. Arliner Young, the first African American woman to earn a doctorate in zoology when she completed her Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania in 1940. The Town of Clifton Forge, where […]

The historical marker highlights the origins and history of Dry Bridge School, which opened in 1928 to serve African American students in Henry County during the era of segregation in public education. The public dedication ceremony for the marker will be held Saturday, October 2, beginning at 11 a.m., at the marker’s location along East […]

The marker highlights three women—two painters, Bertha Von Hillern and Maria J. C. a’ Becket, and writer Emma Howard Wright—who lived in the Fishers Hill area of Shenandoah County during the 1880s and gained national prominence for their creative endeavors. The public dedication ceremony for the marker will be held at Strasburg Square, in Strasburg, […]

A state historical marker will be dedicated in Wise County that recalls the lynching in 1927 of Leonard Woods, an African American coal miner. That event led the Commonwealth of Virginia to define lynching as a state crime in early 1928. The public dedication ceremony is scheduled for this Saturday, October 16, beginning at 11 […]

Three markers—“Warm Springs Baths,” the town of “Warm Springs,” and “West Warm Springs”—will be dedicated that highlight Warm Springs Baths, a resort since the late 1700s, the courthouse town of Warm Springs, and West Warm Springs, an historically African American community tracing back to the post–Civil War era. The public event to dedicate the markers […]

A state historical marker will be dedicated that highlights the role of the Crockett brothers, western Virginia frontiersmen, in helping to secure victory in the American Revolution, especially during the last two years of the war, in 1780 and 1781. The Eastmont Community Foundation and the Meadowbrook Museum of History, sponsor of the marker, will […]

The marker “Joseph R. Holmes” will be dedicated at 1 p.m. at the Old Court House in the town of Charlotte Court House.  Holmes, born enslaved, served as a delegate to the Virginia Republican Party conventions in 1867 and 1869 and was elected to represent Charlotte and Halifax Counties in Virginia’s Constitutional Convention of 1867-68. […]

Two state historical markers will be dedicated in Bristol. One marker recalls the career of city native Dr. Charles S. Johnson, a scholar of race relations and major contributor to the Black cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance. Another marker highlights Lee Street Baptist Church, established by recently emancipated African Americans in 1865. The […]

Dr. Edwin Bancroft Henderson (Library of Virginia) An unveiling ceremony will convene, Saturday, Nov. 20, at 1 p.m. for a state historical marker that highlights the career of Dr. Edwin Bancroft Henderson. (Weds. Nov. 24, marks the 138th anniversary of Henderson’s birth.) The dedication will be held at the marker’s location alongside Henderson’s former residence […]

Dedication of the marker “Blackhead Signpost Road” Southampton Co. The road was so named after Nat Turner’s 1831 revolt, when white militias and residents murdered African Americans in retaliation. The road name referred to the severed head of a black man that was displayed on a post and left to decay to deter future uprisings […]

The marker recalls the lynching of an African American man, Thomas Washington, in 1896 in Essex County for reportedly attempting to assault a young white woman. The marker’s sponsor, Reginald Carter Jr., will lead the dedication in a public ceremony starting at 11 a.m., Saturday, December 18, at the sign’s location on 31438 Tidewater Trail, […]

Marker text: Filipinos, who had served in the U.S. Navy as early as the Civil War, began enlisting in larger numbers after the U.S. took possession of the Philippines following the Spanish-American War. The Philippines gained independence in 1946, and an agreement negotiated the next year allowed the U.S. Navy to recruit Filipino nationals. Over […]

Marker text: Emanuel Quivers (1814-1879) Emanuel Quivers was born into slavery on Berkeley Plantation to Jonathan and Sarah Quivers. Trained as a blacksmith, in 1845 Quivers became an enslaved wage earner at the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond. There he learned the closely guarded puddling technique for manufacturing high-grade iron, rising to supervise a large […]

Susie G. Gibson High School Susie G. Gibson (1878-1949), teacher and community activist, was Bedford County’s supervisor of African American education for 22 years. Her work was sponsored by the Jeanes Fund, established by Anna T. Jeanes in 1907 to enhance opportunities for black students in the rural South. Susie G. Gibson High School, named […]

Silver Lake Historic District English American settler Daniel Harrison owned hundreds of acres in this area in the mid-18th century, and Presbyterians built Cooks Creek Church near here ca. 1750. German Baptist Brethren began moving to the Shenandoah Valley from Maryland and Pennsylvania at midcentury, arriving here by 1790. Brethren church member John J. Rife […]

Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground The City of Richmond opened the Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground here in 1816 to replace the Burial Ground for Negroes in Shockoe Bottom. The new cemetery, laid out along the northern end of Fifth Street near the city’s poorhouse, began as two adjoining one-acre plots, one for free people […]

Josiah Holbrook (1788-1854) Q-6-62 Marker Text: Near this spot, scientist, educator, and founder of the American Lyceum movement Josiah Holbrook accidentally fell to his death while studying rocks and minerals along the bluffs of Blackwater Creek during a research trip through Virginia. Holbrook, a Connecticut native and graduate of Yale, was nationally known for popularizing […]

Lylburn Downing School Lylburn Downing School opened here in 1927 after the Home and School League, an organization of local Black parents and citizens, campaigned for equitable schools. Built with financial support from the Black community, Rockbridge County, and the Rosenwald Fund, the countywide school first served grades 1-9 and expanded to include a high […]

East End High School East End High School opened near this location in Sept. 1953 to serve African American students during the segregation era. Mecklenburg County built the school with a grant from the Battle Fund, established under Gov. John S. Battle as Virginia’s first program for providing direct aid to localities for school construction. […]