In 2016, Lashrecse Aird made history as the youngest woman ever elected to the Virginia House of Delegates. She says her unique perspective - shaped by a childhood of adversity and hardship - allows her to better serve the full range of experiences within her constituency.

Ebony Guy was inspired to get involved in activism from a young age by her grandmother, a beloved civil rights leader in Halifax County, Virginia. Now a board member at Virginia Organizing - her activist work has centered on voter education and political campaigns.

From 1997-2001, Paul Clinton Harris represented Albemarle County in the Virginia House of Delegates. A descendant of enslaved people at Monticello, he describes his unlikely path to political office - serving in the very seat that Thomas Jefferson once held many years ago.

A.E. Dick Howard directed the commission that rewrote Virginia’s constitution, which was eventually enacted in 1971. It was a bipartisan effort intended to heal the wounds of the state’s racist past. 50 years later, he reflects on whether the new constitution went far enough.