For a list of possible topics and research suggestions for your 2021 Virginia History Day project, click here. For a more comprehensive list of Virginia-related topic ideas, see below. Please note - not all of these topics will relate to this year's theme.
1. Julien Binford’s New Deal Mural in Richmond, 1942
2. Old Fiddler’s Convention Established in 1935: Preserving Culture through Music
1. Tobacco’s soil depletion and westward population migration
2. Smithfield Ham: 1926 legal definition
3. Great Moonshine Trial of Franklin County, 1935
4. Teetotalers & Moonshiners: Prohibition in Virginia
5. Repeal of the 18th Amendment
1. Coal mining in Southwest Virginia
2. Military Industrial Complex and the reshaping of Virginia
3. Coca-Cola: Bottling Family Business vs. Syrup Corporation
1. Norfolk teachers’ salaries, Alston case, role of P. B. Young
2. Massive Resistance
3. Danville, 1963
4. Johnson v. Virginia, 1963
5. Loving v. Virginia, 1967
6. Green v. School Board of New Kent County, 1968
7. Stephen Michael Lenton: Gay Rights Advocate within the Catholic Church
8. Trial of Anthony Burns, 1854
1. Loudoun County: Farmland and Server Farms
https://www.washingtonian.com/2016/09/14/70-percent-worlds-web-traffic-flows-loudoun-county/
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/amazon-web-services-data-center/423147/
2. The Pentagon
3. Let there be light: Electrification in Virginia
4. Mapping Inequality in Richmond
5. Route 1 vs. Highways
1. Thomas Jefferson’s Plan for Public Education in Virginia
https://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/bill-more-general-diffusion-knowledge
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-02-02-0132-0004-0079
1. Jamestown’s Starving Time, 1609–1610
If you want to visit Historic Jamestowne: http://historicjamestowne.org/
2. Shenandoah National Park and Eminent Domain
3. Kepone Disaster
1. Jamestown brides, 1619
2. Immigration and Emigration
1. Bacon’s Rebellion, 1676–1677
https://www.virginiahistory.org/collections-and-resources/virginia-history-explorer/bacons-epitaph
https://www.nps.gov/jame/learn/historyculture/bacons-rebellion.htm
https://preservationvirginia.org/visit/property-detail/bacons-castle-bacons-rebellion
https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Bacon_s_Rebellion_1676-1677
If you want to visit Bacon's Castle: https://preservationvirginia.org/visit/historic-properties/bacons-castle
2. Melungeons: Intermarriage, Discrimination, and Racial Stereotypes
3. Virginia Indian Tribes vs. Walter Plecker
4. Indian Schools at Hampton and William & Mary
1. United States Constitution and Bill of Rights
2. Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton’s Compromise of 1790: District of Columbia and States’ Debt
https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2015/05/31/the-compromise-of-1790/
https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/beta/exhibit/washington/wgICkjXd1ni4LQ
1. Indentured servitude and hope for economic prosperity
https://www.virginiahistory.org/collections/unknown-no-longer-database-virginia-slave-names
https://www.virginiahistory.org/sites/default/files/uploads/sov_virginians.pdf
2. Sharecropping
3. Sharecropper Odell Waller: Murder, Poll Taxes, and Jury Reform
4. Lewis Hine: Documenting Child Labor in Virginia
5. Child Labor vs. School Attendance in Virginia
6. Tobacco Worker’s Strike in Richmond, Va., 1940
7. John Henry: Legend and Prison Laborer
1. “Young Turks” Revolt in the General Assembly, 1954
2. West vs. “East” Virginia, 1861–1863
3. Missouri Compromise
4. Compromise of 1850
5. Union or Secession, Virginia Convention of 1861
6. The Fry-Jefferson Map: Mapping out the End of the French-British Boundary Conflict
1. Virginia Statue for Religious Freedom, 1777–1786
https://www.virginiahistory.org/collections-and-resources/virginia-history-explorer/thomas-jefferson
https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Virginia_Statute_for_Establishing_Religious_Freedom_1786
https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/virginia-statute-religious-freedom
1. Reconstruction: The Underwood Convention, 1867–1868
2. Lost Cause statues
3. Knights of Pythias
4. Independent Order of St. Luke and Maggie Walker
5. Taking the Oath, southerners return to the Union
6. John Singleton Mosby, Confederate General and U.S. Consul
7. Civil War reunions: Buried hatchet and forgotten former slaves
8. Knights of Labor Convention, 1886
9. Remaking Virginia
1. John Brown’s Raid at Harpers Ferry, 1859
https://www.civilwar.org/learn/collections/john-browns-harpers-ferry-raid
If you want to visit Harpers Ferry National Historical Park: https://www.nps.gov/hafe/learn/historyculture/john-brown.htm
2. Nat Turner’s Rebellion
3. Enslaved people adjusting to the new: climate and seasoning summer
4. Enslaved people adjusting to the new: language and communication
5. Enslaved people adjusting to the new: lack of freedom of expression
6. Enslaved people adjusting to the new: foodways
7. Robert Carter III manumission in Northern Neck
8. The Slave Trade
1. Virginia’s Constitutional Convention of 1829–1830: East vs. West
2. Women’s Suffrage: Occoquan Workhouse Prisoner’s Hunger Strike
1. First Anglo-Powhatan War: Pocahontas and John Rolfe
https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/First_Anglo-Powhatan_War_1609-1614
https://www.virginiahistory.org/collections-and-resources/virginia-history-explorer/pocahontas
https://www.virginiahistory.org/read-watch-listen/video-and-audio/death-pocahontas
If you want to visit Smith’s Fort Plantation: https://preservationvirginia.org/visit/historic-properties/smiths-fort-plantation
2. Second Anglo-Powhatan War: Opechancanough’s 1622 Attacks
https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Anglo-Powhatan_War_Second_1622-1632
https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Opechancanough_d_1646#start_entry
3. American Revolution
Richmond vs. Williamsburg as capital
Negotiations with the British over the return of slaves at the end of the Revolution
4. Civil War
Arlington House: Lee’s Home and National Cemetery
Hot air balloons for reconnaissance in the Civil War
Spies in the Civil War
Captain Sally Louisa Tompkins, CSA: Military Personnel and Hospital Health
Appomattox, 1865
Quakers of Waterford in Loudoun County
US Colored Troops at the Battle of the Crater, 1864 (https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Crater_Battle_of_the)
5. WW1
Camp Lee to Fort Lee
6. WWII
WWII soldiers coming home different people
Joining the military—opportunity vs. risk
WWII: serving while segregated
Holocaust
7. Vietnam
Fighting for POWs: Phyllis Galanti and Remembering the Forgotten
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