CALL CONGRESS 1-844-USA-0234 DIAL ONLY ONE NUMBER | VAratifyERA is an all-volunteer, nonpartisan grassroots campaign supporting ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment in Virginia. VA Ratify ERA reported that a desire to see the ERA ratified was one of the top three motivators that sent Virginia voters to the polls on Tuesday. November 06,...

CALL CONGRESS 1-844-USA-0234 DIAL ONLY ONE NUMBER Democrats won control of Virginia's legislature—making it likely that the commonwealth will soon become the 38th state to ratify the amendment. For the first time in Virginia's 400-year legislative history, Virginia Democrats elect first female speaker of the House. The law would enshrine in...

Attorney Ben Crump on Trayvon Martin: Since 2012, the families of several unarmed young American black men shot to death by police in high-profile incidents have turned to civil rights attorney Ben Crump in pursuit of justice. Crump has now written a book arguing these killings are the consequences of a flawed and racist criminal justice...

White teachers—mostly women—dominated Virginia freedmen's schools during Reconstruction, but African Americans eventually won the opportunity to teach in black schools.

After the divisive, destructive Civil War, Abraham Lincoln had a plan to reconcile the country and make it whole again. Then he got shot, Andrew Johnson took over, and the disagreements between Johnson and Congress ensured that Reconstruction would fail. The election of 1876 made the whole thing even more of a mess, and the country called it...

Color of Change national effort aimed to build Black political power from the ground up. The National Bail Out collective is a Black-led and Black-centered collective of abolitionist organizers, lawyers and activists building a community-based movement to support our folks and end systems of pretrial detention and ultimately mass incarceration....

The National Bail Out collective is a Black-led and Black-centered collective of abolitionist organizers, lawyers and activists building a community-based movement to support our folks and end systems of pretrial detention and ultimately mass incarceration. We are people who have been impacted by cages — either by being in them ourselves or...

The most powerful elected official you may not know. District attorneys (DAs) are more than just prosecutors. The district attorney’s job is to seek justice in criminal cases, work to prevent crime, and serve as a leader in the diverse communities they represent. The DA is also an elected official. In California, we have 58 elected DAs each...

In this animated interview, the sociologist Bruce Western explains the current inevitability of prison for certain demographics of young black men and how it's become a normal life event. "We've chosen the response of the deprivation of liberty for a historically aggrieved group, whose liberty in the United States was never firmly established...

In the National Archives'-produced video short "Discovering the Civil War" the creators of this exhibition share little-known facts and extraordinary discoveries found in the incomparable Civil War holdings at the National Archives. These stories are shared for the first time in this exhibition, the most extensive display ever assembled from...

A freedman or freedwoman is a former slave who has been released from slavery, usually by legal means. Historically, slaves were freed either by manumission (granted freedom by their owner) or emancipation (granted freedom as part of a larger group).

Shortly before his death, Martin Luther King Jr. called for an economic revolution with protections for the poorest Americans. Half a century later, a group of religious and moral leaders are planning a revival of the Poor People's Campaign, with a wave of civil disobedience in Washington. Rev. William J. Barber, co-chair of the Poor People's...