1. In 1757, the Virginia Assembly passed a law allowing exemptions for the Quaker pacifists from serving in the militia. Quaker pacifists were opposed to violence and military service, and this law was a recognition of their religious beliefs.

2. On June 5, 1837, John Mercer Langston was born in Louisa County, Virginia. Langston was the first African American to be elected to public office in the United States when he won a seat on the town council in Oberlin, Ohio.

3. That same day, in 1837, the Virginia Militia was called out to suppress a slave rebellion in Southampton County led by Nat Turner. Turner's rebellion was one of the most deadly in U.S. history, and resulted in the deaths of around 60 white people and nearly 200 enslaved African Americans.

4. During the Civil War, on June 5, 1862, Union forces led by Major General Irvin McDowell moved against Confederate forces under General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson in the Battle of Port Republic. McDowell's forces were defeated and retreated back across the Shenandoah River, effectively ending the Union's Valley Campaign in Virginia.

5. In 1967, the Loving v. Virginia case was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, striking down Virginia's anti-miscegenation laws and declaring that bans on interracial marriage were unconstitutional. The case was brought by Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple who had been forced to leave Virginia to avoid arrest and imprisonment.