Willis Augustus Hodges (1815-1890)

KV-41

Willis A. Hodges was born in Princess Anne County to Charles and Julia Hodges, free people of color. He moved between New York and Virginia before the Civil War and became an outspoken abolitionist, cofounding the weekly antislavery newspaper the Ram’s Horn in Brooklyn in 1847. In Princess Anne after the war, he opened a school and was a Republican Party leader. The first Black man to win an election in the county, he served in the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1867-68, where he was among the most prominent of its 24 Black members and advocated racial equality. Hodges served two terms on the county Board of Supervisors and was a keeper of the Cape Henry Lighthouse.

Department of Historic Resources, 2023

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References/Bibliographic Citation:

Willard B. Gatewood, ed., Free Man of Color: The Autobiography of Willis Augustus Hodges (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982). Edna Hawkins Hendrix, Black History, Our Heritage: Princess Anne County/Virginia Beach, Virginia (Virginia Beach: self-published, 1998). Brent Tarter and Dictionary of Virginia Biography, “Willis A. Hodges (1815–1890),” Encyclopedia Virginia, 7 Dec. 2020. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/hodges-willis-a-1815-1890. Luther Porter Jackson, Negro Office-Holders in Virginia (Norfolk: Guide Quality Press, 1945). Richard Hume, “Local Black Leaders during Reconstruction in Virginia,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 103, no. 2 (April 1995). Norfolk District Record of Lights—Keepers Log Books, US Life Saving Service, Coast Guard, RG 26, National Archives. Register of Free Negroes, Princess Anne County Court Records. Princess Anne County Minute Book 42: 67, 151, 198. Debates and Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Virginia, 1867-1868 (Richmond, 1868).