Freedom Monument

Throughout slavery in Virginia, enslaved people sought freedom through resistance, self-liberation, and rebellion. At the start of the Civil War, enslaved people sought to aid United States troops at Fort Monroe. On January 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation freed enslaved people only in areas in rebellion against the United States, and in 1865 the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery across the nation. In 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment established the formerly enslaved as citizens of the United States and promised equal protection under the law for all, a promise whose full realization remains an ongoing struggle. Among Virginians who fought against slavery were Gabriel, an enslaved literate blacksmith who in 1800 organized a major planned revolt that was betrayed and suppressed before it began; Nat Turner, leader of the 1831 Southampton Revolt, whose uprising and the violent repression that followed exposed the realities of slavery; Dred Scott, whose freedom lawsuit led to the 1857 Supreme Court decision declaring that persons of African descent had no rights under the U.S. Constitution; William Harvey Carney, an escaped slave from Norfolk who fought with the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment of the United States Colored Troops and became the first person of African descent to earn the Congressional Medal of Honor for heroism at Fort Wagner in 1863; and Mary Jane Richards, born into slavery, who served in a pro-Union spy ring in Richmond during the Civil War and later taught formerly enslaved people in freedmen's schools. Virginians who fought for equality included Reverend Wyatt Tee Walker, a Petersburg minister, civil rights activist, co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and strategist of peaceful protest against segregation; John Mercer Langston, an abolitionist who became Virginia's first African American member of Congress in 1888, the first dean of the law school at Howard University, and the first president of what is now Virginia State University; Lucy Simms, born enslaved, who taught African American students in the Harrisonburg area for 56 years and advocated universal education during segregation; John Mitchell, Jr., born into slavery, who as editor of the Richmond Planet fought lynching, segregation, and the Ku Klux Klan, led the 1904 Richmond Streetcar Boycott, founded a bank, and in 1921 became the first African American to run for Governor of Virginia; and Rosa Dixon Bowser, an educator, women's rights activist, and reformer who founded and helped lead major organizations supporting African American advancement, women's suffrage, and opposition to lynching and racial segregation.

Richmond, Virginia · United States