African American Agency in Alexandria 1865.

African Americans living in Alexandria advocated for their rights through letters to military officials within the final months of the Civil War. Freedmen began to advocate for their rights because of the Alexandria population. Various Freedmen immigrated into Alexandria as refugees searching for a haven that subsequently increased the town’s population to approximately fifty percent African American. One account listed an estimated forty thousand freedmen who lived in the Washington D.C. and Alexandria region in 1865. The approximate number of African American refugees in Alexandria at the beginning of the war is estimated to be one thousand two hundred and fifteen. The Freedmen population increased to approximately seven to eight thousand in 1865. The increased Alexandria population allowed Freedmen to continue to advocate for their rights because they consisted of a large percentage of the total population in a state and town controlled by Unionists. The increase in free labor ideology and access to jobs within Freedmen’s villages in Northern Virginia and Alexandria allowed Freedmen agency or ownership over themselves and their actions. Freedmen in Alexandria obtained proprietorship of their persons and worked to become more active in daily politics, debates, and discussions. They emerged from the Civil War determined to obtain Black Suffrage from their hardship and their endurance of the Union Occupation. 

Freedmen obtained allies as they fled the Civil War toward the safety of Alexandria from 1861-1865. Henry Alvord, the Freedmen Bureau's Superintendent in Alexandria recognized Freedmen's obstacles and struggles when he advocated for them to obtain equal rights as white Americans. Freedmen in Alexandria obtained confidence from the Civil War and support from military officials and other Republicans that enabled them to begin to advocate for their rights.

Alexandria freedmen formed a mass meeting in spring 1865 to demand the repeal of all laws that discriminated against them in judicial courts. Former slaves enjoyed a certain autonomy. Nevertheless, various African Americans joined the Union Army and retained their occupations and trades they had previously acquired. Black Union soldiers did not have significant opportunities to speak or voice their opinions on various concerns and standards of living because of the social hierarchy within the Union Army. Alexandria Freedmen advocated that they should receive equal rights as white northerners. Freedmen advocated for equality through protests on equal housing, choice of occupations, and debates in judiciary courts.