Skip to Main Content

Suggested Readings on Virginia History

Recommended reading on Virginia history from the precontact era to the twentieth century

Reconstruction to 1900

Brundage, W. Fitzhugh. Lynching in the New South: Georgia and Virginia, 18801930. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1993.

Chesson, Michael B. Richmond After the War. Richmond: Virginia State Library, 1981.

Dailey, Jane Elizabeth. Before Jim Crow: The Politics of Race in Postemancipation Virginia. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.

Dotson, Rand. Roanoke, Virginia. Magic City of the New South. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2007.

Engs, Robert Francis. Freedom’s First Generation: Black Hampton, Virginia, 18611890. New York: Fordham University Press, 2004.

Jones, Catherine A. Intimate Reconstructions: Children in Postemancipation Virginia. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2015.

Lowe, Richard. Republicans and Reconstruction in Virginia, 1856–70. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1991.

Maddex, Jack P., Jr. The Virginia Conservatives, 1867–1879: A Study in Reconstruction Politics. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1970.

Moger, Allen W. Virginia: Bourbonism to Byrd, 1870–1925. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1968.

Morgan, Lynda J. Emancipation in Virginia’s Tobacco Belt, 1850–1870. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1992.

Pulley, Raymond H. Old Virginia Restored: An Interpretation of the Progressive Impulse, 1870–1930. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1968.

Tarter, Brent. A Saga of the New South: Race, Law, and Public Debt in Virginia. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2016.

Thorp, Daniel B. Facing Freedom: An African American Community in Virginia from Reconstruction to Jim Crow. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2017.