Edma Morisot was a French artist and the older sister of the Impressionist painter Berthe Morisot. Edma Morisot was born in 1839 in France. Brought up in Paris, Edma Morisot received a bourgeois education, like her sisters Yves and Berth, that included piano and drawing. All three sisters were encouraged to pursue drawing by their mother, who had them first study with the neoclassical painter Geoffroy Alphonse Chocane in 1857. Edma and Berthe both wanted to pursue their training further, which led them to take lessons under the well-regarded painter Joseph Guichard, a former student of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. According to Armand Forreau's 1925 biography of Berthe Morisot, Guichard is said to have warned their mother: "With natures like those of your daughters my teaching will not confer the meagre talent of genteel accomplishment, they will become painters. Do you have any idea what that means? In your milieu of the grande bourgeoisie it would be a revolution."Guichard encouraged the young women to copy paintings at the Louvre, which the two women visited chaperoned by their mother.

There, they met the artist Félix Bracquemond in 1859. The Morisot sisters soon tired of copying the old masters, in 1860 they began to study with the Barbizon painter Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, who taught them to paint en plein air. In 1863, when Corot became too busy to continue to instruct them and Berthe came under the tutelage of another Barbican painting, Achille François Oudinot; the sisters broke with Oudinot on acrimonious terms, they referred to Corot. as their teacher who introduced them to several artists including Edouard Manet. Edma's landscape paintings were influenced by the Barbizon style of her instructors, such as Corot, she painted numerous landscapes, but in 1863 she turned to portraiture. That year, she painted a remarkable portrait of her sister Berthe, which shows her concentrating in front of her canvas. In 1864 she submitted two paintings to the annual Salon, she submitted paintings that were accepted in 1865, 1866, 1867, 1868. In 1867 Edma sent three paintings to a provincial exhibition in Bordeaux, one of many organised by the Friends of Art societies.

The sisters at least tried to sell, paintings through Alfred Cadart. Her paintings, which now reside in private collections comprise landscapes and portraits; the two sisters were close in their youth and constructively critiquing each other as they developed as painters. "In her crucial, formative years," Berthe "depended most of all on her sister. Behind Berthe Morisot was Edma Morisot." A portrait of Berthe by Edma, from 1863, is the earliest surviving picture of Berthe. The two sisters were known to travel together, exhibit together, painted side by side; the two women, best friends and companions for 12 years, keenly felt the separation brought about by Edma's marriage. In their mature years, her role as confidant and supporter in Berthe's life was replaced by Eugène Manet, the brother of Édouard Manet, whom Berthe married in 1874. Throughout her life Edma modelled for her sister's paintings, can be seen in the following works: Edma Morisot lisant 1867 Cleveland museum of art Portrait de Mme Pontillon 1869 National Gallery of Art Washington, DC Portrait de Mme Pontillon née Edma Morisot, sœur de l'artiste8 1871 Musée d'Orsay Le berceau 1872 Musée d'Orsay: le tableau représente Edma Morisot près du berceau de sa fille Blanche Chasse aux papillons 1874 Musée d'Orsay: les personnages sont Edma Morisot et ses filles Jeanne et Blanche On 8 March 1869, Edma married Adolphe Pontillon, a naval officer and long-time friend of Édouard Manet.

The couple moved to Lorient in Brittany. Edma's career as an artist ceased following her marriage, she painted a portrait of her husband and executed some pastel copies of Berthe's work, but other artistic production during her marriage remains unknown. Edma died in Paris in 1921. Edma Morisot was included in the 2018 exhibit Women in Paris 1850-1900. For some of Edma Morisot's works see ArtNet

Willis Augustus Hodges was an African American abolitionist and statesman. Though born to free parents, Hodges became an outspoken advocate for enslaved African Americans during the Antebellum period, giving aid to the Underground Railroad, collaborating with such notable figures as William Lloyd Garrison, John Brown and Frederick Douglass, publishing an antislavery newspaper, The Ram’s Horn. Following the Civil War, Hodges was active in Reconstruction politics, attending the State Constitutional Convention of Virginia as a delegate from 1867 to 1868. Hodges was born in Princess Anne County, Virginia on February 12, 1815 to Charles Augustus Hodges, a free African American, Julia Nelson Willis, a free woman of mixed-race descent. Charles was a landowner and a successful farmer, owning 200 acres of property and one slave by the time of 1840. While he would come to be a forceful opponent of slavery, Willis's origins led to a lifelong concern for the free blacks in the South, he dedicated his autobiography to their plight.

When Willis was fourteen, his brother William was arrested for antislavery agitation and thrown into jail. He escaped and fled to Canada, but the incident marked the Hodges family as pariahs in Princess Anne County, young Willis found himself the victim of mob violence on more than one occasion during this time. Further discriminatory measures taken by whites in the aftermath of the Nat Turner rebellion caused Willis to leave Virginia for New York in 1836. At the instigation of his sister, Willis devoted himself to study, he soon began attending antislavery meetings. Hodges grew impatient with Northerners he viewed as being "more men of words than deeds," and became an impassioned advocate for the immediate abolition of slavery by any means necessary, he started a newspaper, The Ram's Horn, in the 1840s, which soon drew him into collaboration with John Brown, the antislavery zealot who would famously go on to raid Harpers Ferry, Virginia in 1859. During the Civil War, Hodges served as a scout for the Union Army and used his knowledge of Princess Anne County and the surrounding area to assist Federal forces in its occupation.

At the conclusion of the war, Hodges returned to his boyhood home and was chosen to represent Virginia at the constitutional convention of 1867-1868. The conventions of this period, mandated by the United States Congress, marked the "first time sat alongside whites as lawmakers," both in Virginia and throughout the occupied south. Hodges' leading role at the convention singled him out for ridicule in the southern press, bitterly hostile to the role of African Americans in Reconstruction. Aligning himself with the Radical Republicans, Hodges supported the enfranchisement of blacks, demanded the disenfranchisement of former Confederates, sought the racial integration of schools; when Democrats returned to power in Virginia, Hodges again went to New York in 1881, though he would revisit Virginia in years. Hodges died on September 1890, in Norfolk, Virginia, he was seventy-five. Foner, Eric. "Blueprints for a Republican South: The Constitutional Conventions." In Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 316-33.

New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2014. Hodges, Willis Augustus, Willard B. Gatewood. Free Man of Color: The Autobiography of Willis Augustus Hodges. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982. Kirk, Ian. "Hodges, Willis Augustus." The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed. Accessed November 17, 2018. Https://blackpast.org/aah/hodges-willis-augustus-1815-1890. Lowe, Richard. "William Augustus Hodges: "We Are Now Coming to New Things"." Edited by Steven Woodworth. In The Human Tradition in the Civil War and Reconstruction, 213-24. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources Inc. 2000. Kirk, Ian. "Hodges, Willis Augustus." Black Past. "Documents of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Virginia." Archive