Education at LVA

Education at LVA Education at LVA provides resources and information for teachers and educators on behalf of the Education and Outreach team at the Library of Virginia.

General Information about LVA

The Library of Virginia is the state's oldest institution dedicated to the preservation of Virginia's history and culture. Today the Library houses more than 110 million manuscript items and more than 1.9 million bound volumes. The Library welcomes more than 180,000 visitors each year. In addition to being the state library and archive, the Library has a thriving exh

ibition program and public program schedule including free book talks, lectures, and the popular Virginia Literary Awards. The Library of Virginia was created by the General Assembly in 1823 to organize, care for, and manage the state's growing collection of books and official records - many of which date back to the early colonial period. The Library occupied rooms on the third floor of the Capitol in Richmond until 1895, when Virginia erected a new Library and office building on the eastern side of Capitol Square. Outgrowing this location, the Library in 1940 moved to a handsome, new art-deco building on Capitol Street, adjacent to City Hall and the Executive Mansion. By the 1990s, space considerations and an increasing dependence on sophisticated new technology led to the construction of a spacious new six-story building at 800 East Broad Street, which opened to the public in 1997. https://www.facebook.com/LibraryofVA

in 1921, a convention of African American Republicans, many of whom had been excluded from the all-white Republican Pa...
09/06/2026

in 1921, a convention of African American Republicans, many of whom had been excluded from the all-white Republican Party Virginia state convention, nominated an all-Black Republican ticket of candidates for statewide office. The slate included newspaper editor John Mitchell Jr. for governor and banker Maggie L. Walker for state superintendent of public instruction. Do you teach about Black voting rights and the Fifteenth Amendment? Learn more in our online classroom resource Shaping the Constitution: https://edu.lva.virginia.gov/oc/stc/entries/the-richmond-planet-announced-john-mitchell's-candidacy-for-governor-september-10-1921

Image: front page of the Sept. 10, 1921, Richmond Planet with a photograph of John Mitchell Jr. and listing the nominees on the Republican ticket (view online at Virginia Chronicle: https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=RP19210910.1.2)

Do you teach about the English colonization of Virginia? If you use John Smith's map of the Chesapeake Bay region in you...
09/03/2026

Do you teach about the English colonization of Virginia? If you use John Smith's map of the Chesapeake Bay region in your classroom, check out our Document Bank entry on Smith’s map and the ways in which Virginia Indian tribal members regard his map today: https://www.lva.virginia.gov/collections/educator-resources/dbva/items/show/53

Image: 17th century map of Virginia with vignettes of Native Americans in the top left and top right corners.

September is National Literacy Month! Are you familiar with the Library of Virginia's Dial-A-Story phone line? Call each...
09/01/2026

September is National Literacy Month! Are you familiar with the Library of Virginia's Dial-A-Story phone line? Call each week to hear a story read aloud in English and Spanish. You can listen as many times as you like. Dial 833-690-0646 and follow the directions. You can access this fun service 24/7, and the stories change every Wednesday!

Library of Virginia staff were thrilled to welcome students and other volunteers to this year's Transcribe-a-versary cel...
08/30/2026

Library of Virginia staff were thrilled to welcome students and other volunteers to this year's Transcribe-a-versary celebrating Making History, our ongoing crowdsourced transcription project. Transcribing historic documents can be a great way for students to gain a better understanding of the past. Find out how to participate at https://www.lva.virginia.gov/collections/making-history

High school participants shared their experiences in this 2024 post from The UncommonWealth blog: https://uncommonwealth.lva.virginia.gov/blog/2025/04/23/making-history-volunteer-week

Image: a group of people seated at tables with laptops in front of them and facing a presenter and a large screen displaying handwritten notes.

This is National Parks Week! Did you know that Virginia has almost two dozen national parks? The first was Shenandoah Na...
08/29/2026

This is National Parks Week! Did you know that Virginia has almost two dozen national parks? The first was Shenandoah National Park, which opened in 1936. Learn more about its complicated creation in our online classroom resource Document Bank of Virginia: https://www.lva.virginia.gov/collections/educator-resources/dbva/items/show/170

Image: portion of a 1937 map of Shenandoah National Park, Map Collection, Library of Virginia.

On Aug. 27, 1962, Congress sent the Twenty-fourth Amendment, which outlawed poll taxes as a voting requirement in federa...
08/27/2026

On Aug. 27, 1962, Congress sent the Twenty-fourth Amendment, which outlawed poll taxes as a voting requirement in federal elections, to the states for ratification. At the time, Virginia was one of five states that still maintained a poll tax to limit the ability of African Americans to vote. The amendment became part of the U.S. Constitution in January 1964. Do you teach about the history of voting rights? Learn more about Virginia's poll tax in our online classroom resource Shaping the Constitution: https://www.lva.virginia.gov/collections/educator-resources/online-classroom/stc/entries/voter-registration-in-portsmouth-virginia-september-29-1964

Image: White and Black men and women standing in a line at the Portsmouth city registrar's office, Lee F. Rodgers Photograph Collection, Portsmouth (Va.) Public Library, Esther Murdaugh Wilson Memorial Room, Portsmouth Public Library Digital Collection, Library of Virginia (view online: https://lva.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01LVA_INST/1bp9e8r/alma990011332140205756)

August 26 is Women's Equality Day! Since 1973, it has marked the day that the ratification of the 19th Amendment grantin...
08/26/2026

August 26 is Women's Equality Day! Since 1973, it has marked the day that the ratification of the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote was certified in 1920. But gaining the right to vote was only the beginning. Some women began working almost immediately for an equal rights amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which Congress sent to the states for ratification in 1972. Virginia’s General Assembly did not allow the amendment to come to a full vote early in the 1980s, but in 2020 Virginia became the 38th state needed to ratify the ERA. However, it has not yet been certified. Learn more about the fight for the Equal Rights Amendment in Virginia in these posts from The UncommonWealth blog:

“A long step” in the Complicated History of Equal Rights for Women in Virginia - https://uncommonwealth.lva.virginia.gov/blog/2023/12/08/era-in-virginia/

Unfinished Business: The Fate of the Equal Rights Amendment - https://uncommonwealth.lva.virginia.gov/blog/2020/10/28/unfinished-business/

Image: pink flyer advertising a January 22,1978, rally and march from Monroe Park to Capitol Square in Richmond, Library of Virginia.

Attention Virginia history teachers! Are you looking for primary source materials to use in your classroom? Find histori...
08/24/2026

Attention Virginia history teachers! Are you looking for primary source materials to use in your classroom? Find historic documents, maps, newspapers, and more at our Educator Resources page: https://www.lva.virginia.gov/collections/educator-resources

Image: oil painting of American forces storming a redoubt at the Battle of Yorktown in 1781, State Art Collection, Library of Virginia.

On August 21, 1939, five young Black men were arrested while participating in a sit-in at the Alexandria Public Library....
08/21/2026

On August 21, 1939, five young Black men were arrested while participating in a sit-in at the Alexandria Public Library. It had been organized by attorney Samuel W. Tucker to force the desegregation of the public space from which Black residents were barred. Instead, the city opened a separate library for African Americans a few months later. As a Virginia NAACP attorney, Tucker later participated in numerous discrimination and segregation cases related to schools, teacher pay, and jury selection before local, state, and federal courts. Learn more about this pioneering civil rights attorney in our online resource Virginia Changemakers: https://www.lva.virginia.gov/collections/educator-resources/changemakers/items/show/402

Image: An African American man wearing a suit and tie.

August is Woman Suffrage Month in Virginia! Women gained the right to vote after decades of advocacy when the Nineteenth...
08/18/2026

August is Woman Suffrage Month in Virginia! Women gained the right to vote after decades of advocacy when the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in August 1920. Do you teach about the woman suffrage movement? Find primary sources for your classroom in our lesson plan in Document Bank of Virginia: https://www.lva.virginia.gov/collections/educator-resources/dbva/items/show/337

Image: newspaper clipping of six white women wearing 1910s era dresses and hats standing in front of banners with women's voting right slogans, Minute Book of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, Virginia Branch, Accession 52758, Library of Virginia (view online: https://lva.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01LVA_INST/17ab9lt/alma9918101439605756)

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