The Reconstruction era was a period in United States history following the American Civil War, dominated by the legal, social, and political challenges of abolishing slavery and reintegrating the former Confederate States of America into the United States. During this period, three amendments were added to the United States Constitution to grant equal civil rights to the newly freed slaves.
Ota Benga was a Mbuti man, known for being featured in an exhibit at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri, and as a human zoo exhibit in 1906 at the Bronx Zoo. Benga had been purchased from native African slave traders by the explorer Samuel Phillips Verner, a businessman searching for African people for the exhibition, who took him to the United States. While at the Bronx Zoo, Benga was allowed to walk the grounds before and after he was exhibited in the zoo's Monkey House. Benga was placed in a cage with an orangutan as a lampoon on Darwinism.
Carrie Williams Clifford was an author, clubwoman, and activist in the women's rights and civil rights movements in the United States.
Henry Lewis Benning was a general in the Confederate States Army. He also was a lawyer, legislator, and judge on the Georgia Supreme Court. He commanded "Benning's Brigade" during the American Civil War. Following the Confederacy's defeat at the end of the war, he returned to his native Georgia, where he lived out the rest of his life. Fort Benning was named in his honor until 2023, when it was redesignated Fort Moore.
The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg was a seminary of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It was one of seven ELCA seminaries, one of the three seminaries in the Eastern Cluster of Lutheran Seminaries, and a member institution of the Washington Theological Consortium. It was founded in 1826 under prominent but controversial theologian and professor Samuel Simon Schmucker (1799-1873) for the recently organized General Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the United States. The seminary was the oldest continuing Lutheran seminary in the United States until it was merged on July 1, 2017, after 189 years of operation, with the nearby and former rival Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia to form the United Lutheran Seminary. The new institution continues to use both campuses.
Dr. Vernon Johns was an American minister based in the South and a pioneer in the civil rights movement. He is best known as the pastor (1947–52) of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. He was succeeded there by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Allen University is a private historically black university in Columbia, South Carolina. It has more than 600 students and still serves a predominantly Black constituency. The campus is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as Allen University Historic District.
Virginia University of Lynchburg (VUL) is a private historically black Christian university in Lynchburg, Virginia. The university is accredited by the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools and offers instruction and degrees, primarily in religious studies, including a Doctorate of Ministry program. The campus is a historic district listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Reverdy Cassius Ransom was an American Christian socialist, civil rights activist, and leader in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. He was ordained and served as the 48th A.M.E. bishop.
Lewis Woodson was an educator, minister, writer, and abolitionist. He was an early leader in the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Woodson started and helped to build other institutions within the free African-American communities in Ohio and western Pennsylvania prior to the American Civil War.
Anne Bethel Spencer was an American poet, teacher, civil rights activist, librarian, and gardener. She was a prominent figure of the Harlem Renaissance, also known as the New Negro Movement, despite living in Virginia for most of her life, far from the center of the movement in New York. She met Edward Spencer while attending Virginia Seminary in Lynchburg, Virginia. Following their marriage in 1901, the couple moved into a house he builtArchived 2020-11-30 at the Wayback Machine at 1313 Pierce Street, where they raised a family and lived for the remainder of their lives.
Carrie Allen McCray was an African-American writer.
John Robert Jones was a Virginia educator who became a brigadier general in the Confederate army during the American Civil War, during which he twice received severe wounds. After the war, he became a merchant and later served for decades as a commissioner in chancery in Harrisonburg.
Rutherford Birchard Hayes was an American military officer and politician who served as the 19th president of the United States from 1877 to 1881. During the American Civil War, Hayes served in the Union Army and earned a reputation for bravery in combat, rising up the ranks to serve as brevet major general. After the war, he served in the House of Representatives and as Governor of Ohio before assuming the presidency after his disputed victory in the 1876 presidential election.
The Healy family was an Irish-American and African-American family notable for the high achievements of its first generation of children, who were born into slavery in Georgia in the second half of the nineteenth century.
James Allen Latané was an American Protestant priest who after the American Civil War became bishop and eventually Presiding Bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Church.
Clarens or the Clarens Estate is a 19th-century Federal-style mansion in Alexandria, Virginia. Clarens is best known as the residence of James Murray Mason, a United States representative and United States senator from Virginia and grandson of George Mason, a Founding Father of the United States.
Benjamin Joseph Keiley was an American prelate of the Catholic Church. He served as bishop of the Diocese of Savannah in Georgia from 1900 to 1922.
Jane Serepta Dean was born into slavery in northern Virginia, freed as a result of the American Civil War, and became an important founder of churches and Sunday Schools for African Americans in northern Virginia. Dean founded the Manassas Industrial School for Colored Youth, which for more than four decades was the only institution of secondary education available to African-American youth in Northern Virginia, and one of only two in the state without overt religious affiliation.
Mary Rice Hayes Allen was an American educator. She served as the president of Virginia Theological Seminary and College from 1906 through 1908.
