Slavery in Virginia

Virginia Untold provides digital access to records that document some of the lived experiences of enslaved and free Black and multiracial people in the Library of Virginia’s collections.

Guide to records that document the lives of enslaved and free African Americans before 1870.

Encyclopedia articles about slavery in Virginia.

Article and videos exploring the the first Africans brought to Virginia by the transatlantic slave trade.

More than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of formerly enslaved people.

Court petitions, runaway notices, and slavery deeds from the American South as well as a number of northern states.

Database of newspaper advertisements documenting fugitives from North American slavery.

Online books and articles that document the individual and collective story of Black people struggling for freedom and human rights in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries.

Historical images documenting the experiences of Africans who were enslaved and transported to the Americas and the lives of their descendants in the slave societies of the New World.

Digital and print resources selected by the Library of Congress.

Primary sources related to slavery and abolition.

Recordings of former slaves in the American Folklife Center, recorded between 1932 and 1975 in nine states.