Millie Lawson Bethell Paxton
Millie Lawson Bethell Paxton was a civic leader who worked toward a more inclusive democracy in Roanoke, Virginia.
Tag Archives: African Descent
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Evelyn Thomas Butts
Evelyn Thomas Butts was a civil rights activist and Democratic Party leader from Norfolk who helped overturn Virginia’s poll tax.
Mary Aggie
Mary Aggie was an enslaved woman who became a principal in a court case that changed Virginia‘s statute law.
Virginia Estelle Randolph
Virginia Estelle Randolph, born of formerly enslaved parents in Richmond, was a pioneering educator, community health advocate, organizational leader, and humanitarian.
Ruth Harvey Charity
Ruth LaCountess Harvey Wood Charity was a civil rights activist and defense attorney.
Mary Richards Bowser
Mary Richards Bowser was born into slavery and later became a missionary to Liberia, a Union spy in the Confederate White House during the American Civil War (1861–1865), and a teacher at freedmen’s schools.
Sarah Garland Boyd Jones
Sarah Garland Boyd Jones became the first African American woman to pass the Virginia Medical Examining Board’s examination.
Elizabeth Key Grinstead
Elizabeth Key was a principal in one of the important early court cases that shaped the evolving law of slavery in seventeenth-century Virginia.
Suzanne Louverture
Wife of Haitian Revolution leader Toussaint Louverture; she was tortured when captured by Napoleon. They demanded information about the whereabouts of her husband which she never divulged.
Ann Banks Davis
Ann Banks Davis was an enslaved woman who lived in Virginia in the 1800s