Virginia Historical Society Podcasts

Step into the vaults of history with "Treasures of Virginia," a podcast series that delves deep into the stories behind the remarkable objects on display at the Virginia Museum of History & Culture's (VMHC). Each episode is a journey through time, guided by the artifacts that have shaped Virginia's rich and diverse history. Interviews with expert historians and curators offer listeners a comprehensive understanding of Virginia's past and its enduring impact on the present. Join us on a voyage of discovery as we unlock the secrets of Virginia's past, one artifact at a time. "Treasures of Virginia" invites you to explore history in a whole new light and gain a profound appreciation for the enduring legacy of the Commonwealth.

Step into the vaults of history with "Treasures of Virginia," a podcast series that delves deep into the stories behind the remarkable objects on display at the Virginia Museum of History & Culture's (VMHC). Each episode is a journey through time, guided by the artifacts that have shaped Virginia's rich and diverse history. Interviews with expert historians and curators offer listeners a comprehensive understanding of Virginia's past and its enduring impact on the present. Join us on a voyage of discovery as we unlock the secrets of Virginia's past, one artifact at a time. "Treasures of Virginia" invites you to explore history in a whole new light and gain a profound appreciation for the enduring legacy of the Commonwealth.

On March 7, 2024, biographer Rebecca Boggs Roberts provided an unflinching look at First Lady Edith Bolling Galt Wilson. While this nation has yet to elect its first female president—and though history has downplayed her role—just over a century ago a woman became the nation's first acting president. In fact, she was born in 1872, and her name was Edith Bolling Galt Wilson. She climbed her way out of Appalachian poverty and into the highest echelons of American power and in 1919 effectively acted as the first female president of the United States when her husband, Woodrow Wilson, was incapacitated. Beautiful, brilliant, charismatic, catty, and calculating, she was a complicated figure whose personal quest for influence reshaped the position of First Lady into one of political prominence forever. Rebecca Boggs Roberts offered an unflinching look at the woman whose ascent mirrors that of many powerful American women before and since, one full of the compromises and complicities women have undertaken throughout time in order to find security for themselves and make their mark on history. Rebecca Boggs Roberts is an award-winning educator, author, and speaker, and a leading historian of American women's suffrage and civic participation. She is currently deputy director of events at the Library of Congress and serves on the board of the National Archives Foundation, on the Council of Advisors of the Women's Suffrage National Monument Foundation, and on the Editorial Advisory Committee of the White House Historical Association. Her books include the award-winning The Suffragist Playbook: Your Guide to Changing the World; Suffragists in Washington, D.C.: The 1913 Parade and the Fight for the Vote; and Untold Power: The Fascinating Rise and Complex Legacy of First Lady Edith Wilson. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On February 22, 2024, historians Cassandra Good and Carolyn Eastman presented a lecture on the Washington family, celebrity, and the development of the new United States. While it's widely known that George and Martha Washington never had children of their own, few are aware that they raised children together. In Good's book First Family, we see Washington as a father figure and are introduced to the children he helped raise, tracing their complicated roles in American history. The children of Martha Washington's son by her first marriage—Eliza, Patty, Nelly and Wash Custis—were born into life in the public eye, well-known as George Washington's family and keepers of his legacy. By turns petty and powerful, glamorous and cruel, the Custises used Washington as a means to enhance their own power and status. As enslavers committed to the American empire, the Custis family embodied the failures of the American experiment that finally exploded into civil war—all the while being celebrities in a soap opera of their own making. Cassandra Good is a writer and historian focused on gender and politics in early America who currently serves as Associate Professor of History at Marymount University. She is the author of the prize-winning Founding Friendships: Friendships between Men and Women in the Early American Republic and her newest book, First Family: George Washington's Heirs and the Making of America. Carolyn Eastman is an historian of early America with special interest in eighteenth and nineteenth-century histories of political culture, the media, and gender. She is Professor of History at Virginia Commonwealth University and the author most recently of the award-winning The Strange Genius of Mr. O: The United States' First Forgotten Celebrity. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On February 8, 2024, historian Marvin T. Chiles discussed the subject of his new book The Struggle to Change: Race and the Politics of Reconciliation in Modern Richmond. Much is known about the City of Richmond's troubled past with race and race relations. Richmond was one of the largest entrepot for the transatlantic slave trade, the capital of the Confederacy, a foundational city for Jim Crow segregation, the sacred home of Confederate memorialization, and the hotbed of Massive Resistance to school desegregation. Less talked about, however, is that Richmond was a national leader in racial reconciliation efforts after the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Residents, business leaders, and public history organizations spent the last three decades of the twentieth century seeking to fix Richmond's economy and public history scene to overcome its reputation and reality of racial strife, a conundrum created by the city's troubled history. Yet, Richmond's reconciliation movement unintendedly exacerbated the vestiges of past discrimination, that being racial gaps in wealth building, housing stability, and educational achievement. This lecture, based on The Struggle for Change, implores Richmonders and those interested in urban affairs, race relations, and southern history to not see current racial disparities as a continuum of past discrimination. Rather, Richmond's recent history shows that progressive actions and actors exacerbated systemic issues through making positive changes in their city, the South, and nation. Dr. Marvin T. Chiles is the Assistant Professor of African American History at Old Dominion University. The Struggle for Change is his first book. He has also published several articles, including “A Period of Misunderstanding: Reforming Jim Crow in Richmond, Virginia, 1930–1954,” which won the William M. E. Rachal Award from the Virginia Museum of History & Culture in 2021.

On January 11, 2024, historian John Reeves gave a lecture on the rise of Ulysses S. Grant during an extraordinary decade. Captain Ulysses S. Grant, an obscure army officer who resigned his commission in 1854, rose to become general-in-chief of the United States Army in 1864. What accounts for this astonishing turn-around? Was it destiny? Or was he just an ordinary man, opportunistically benefiting from the turmoil of the Civil War to advance to the highest military rank? Grant's life story is an almost inconceivable tale of redemption within the context of his fraught relationships with his antislavery father and his slaveholding wife. His connection to the institution of slavery, before and during the war, will be reconsidered in this talk. John Reeves has been a teacher, editor, and writer for more than thirty years. The Civil War, in particular, has been his passion since he first read Bruce Catton's The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War as an elementary school student in the 1960s. He is the author of The Lost Indictment of Robert E. Lee: The Forgotten Case against an American Icon, A Fire in the Wilderness: The First Battle Between Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee, and Soldier of Destiny: Slavery, Secession, and the Redemption of Ulysses S. Grant. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On December 14, 2023, historian John Ragosta gave a lecture on Patrick Henry's final political battles. In a democracy, how do you disagree with government policy? What is a loyal opposition? In the 1790s, hyper-partisan political battles threatened to tear the new nation apart. Under the Sedition Act, a person criticizing the government could be jailed; opposition newspaper editors were targeted. In response, the Kentucky Resolutions, drafted by Thomas Jefferson, declared that Kentucky could proclaim federal laws unconstitutional and “nullify” them—secession, state versus state, and against the federal government, loomed. Newspapers warned of “Civil War!” George Washington begged Patrick Henry to come out of retirement, oppose these dangerous policies, and save the union. Though Henry had been the leading antifederalist, arguing against ratification of the Constitution, in 1799, he rebuked Jefferson and insisted that since “we the people” adopted the Constitution—even though Henry had opposed it—anyone contesting federal policy must seek reform “in a constitutional way.” Henry helped to define a loyal opposition. Unfortunately, that story was suppressed by Jeffersonians throughout the 19th century. John Ragosta discussed this story—recounted in For the People, For the Country: Patrick Henry's Final Political Battle—a story of how a democracy must work if it is to survive. John A. Ragosta is a historian at the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello. He is the author of Religious Freedom: Jefferson's Legacy, America's Creed and For the People, For the Country: Patrick Henry's Final Political Battle. This program, part of the VMHC's multi-year initiative to commemorate the 250th Anniversary of the U.S., is presented by the John Marshall Center for Constitutional History & Civics. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On November 30, 2023, historian Jessica Taylor discussed the subject of her new book, Plain Paths and Dividing Lines: Navigating Native Land and Water in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake. It is one thing to draw a line in the sand but another to enforce it. This talk will follow the Native peoples and the newcomers who, in pursuit of freedom or profit, crossed emerging boundaries—fortifications, law, property lines—surrounding developing English plantations in the seventeenth-century Chesapeake Bay. Algonquians had cultivated ties to one another and others beyond the region by canoe and road for centuries. Their networks continued to define the watery Chesapeake landscape, even as Virginia and Maryland planters erected fences, policed unfree laborers and Native neighbors, and dispatched land surveyors. Using Native trade routes and places, and sometimes with the help of Native people themselves, escaping indentured and enslaved people absconded fueled by their own developing, alternate ideas about freedom and connection. Taylor will talk about how Native land provided the perfect setting for early resistance to colonialism, and about exciting new efforts to document their escapades. Dr. Jessica Taylor is an assistant professor in the history department at Virginia Tech. As a public historian, she collaborates on projects across the Southeast as diverse as oral histories with boatbuilders, augmented reality tours of historic sites, and reconstructed maps of precolonial landscapes. Her current work connects graduate and undergraduate students to history firsthand through fieldwork experiences in oral history, and an ongoing project documenting escape attempts of indentured servants and enslaved people in the seventeenth-century Chesapeake. She is the author of Plain Paths and Dividing Lines: Navigating Native Land and Water in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On October 24, 2023, Maj. Gen. Jason Q. Bohm, USMC, gave a lecture on the formation of the Marine Corps and its role in the American Revolution. The fighting prowess of united states marines is second to none, but few know of the Corps' humble beginnings and what it achieved during the early years of the American Revolution. Jason Bohm rectifies this oversight with his eye-opening Washington's Marines: The Origins of the Corps and the American Revolution, 1775–1777. Bohm artfully tells the story of the creation of the Continental Marines and the men who led them during the parallel paths followed by the Army and Marines in the opening years of the war and through the early successes and failures at Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill, Canada, Boston, Charleston, and more. Washington's Marines is the first complete study of its kind to weave the men, strategy, performance, and personalities of the Corps' formative early years into a single compelling account. Maj. Gen. Jason Q. Bohm is a Marine with more than 30 years of service. An infantryman by trade, he has commanded at every level from platoon commander to commanding general in peacetime and war. Bohm also served in several key staff positions, including as a strategic planner with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Director of the Marine Corps Expeditionary Warfare School, House Director, Marine Corps Office of Legislative Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives, and Chief of Staff of U.S. Naval Striking and Support Forces, NATO. Bohm has a bachelor's degree in marketing, a master's degree in military studies, and a master's degree in national security studies. Jason has written several articles for the Marine Corps Gazette and won various writing awards from the Marine Corps Association. He is the author of From the Cold War to ISIL: One Marine's Journey and Washington's Marines: The Origins of the Corps and the American Revolution, 1775–1777. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On November 8, 2023, award-winning author Edward Ayers delivered a lecture about his book, "American Visions: The United States, 1800–1860." The early decades of the nineteenth century saw the expansion of slavery, Native dispossession, and wars with Canada and Mexico. Mass immigration and powerful religious movements sent tremors through American society. But even as the powerful defended the status quo, others defied it: voices from the margins moved the center; eccentric visions altered the accepted wisdom, and acts of empathy questioned self-interest. Edward L. Ayers's rich history examines the visions that moved Frederick Douglass, Margaret Fuller, the Native American activist William Apess, and others to challenge entrenched practices and beliefs. Lydia Maria Child condemned the racism of her fellow northerners at great personal cost. Melville and Thoreau, Joseph Smith and Samuel Morse all charted new paths for America in the realms of art, nature, belief, and technology. Ayers turns his distinctive historical sensibility to a period when bold visionaries and critics built vigorous traditions of dissent and innovation into the foundation of the nation. Those traditions remain alive for us today. Edward Ayers is university professor of the humanities and president emeritus at the University of Richmond. He has received the Bancroft and Lincoln Prizes for his scholarship, been named National Professor of the Year, received the National Humanities Medal from President Obama at the White House, served as president of the Organization of American Historians, and was the founding board chair of the American Civil War Museum in Richmond. He is executive director of New American History and Bunk, dedicated to making the nation's history more visible and useful for a broad range of audiences. This lecture was co-hosted by American Civil War Museum, Black HIstory Museum & Cultural Center of Virginia, and The Valentine. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On September 21, 2023, Viola Franziska Müller gave a virtual-only lecture about her book, Escape to the City: Fugitive Slaves in the Antebellum Urban South. Viola Franziska Müller examines runaways who camouflaged themselves among the free Black populations in Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans, and, particularly discussed in this lecture, Richmond. In the urban South, they found shelter, work, and other survival networks that enabled them to live in slaveholding territory, shielded and supported by their host communities in an act of collective resistance to slavery. Though all fugitives risked their lives to escape slavery, those who fled to southern cities were perhaps the most vulnerable of all. Not dissimilar to modern-day refugees and illegal migrants, runaway slaves who sought refuge in the urban South were antebellum America's undocumented people, forging lives free from bondage but without the legal status of freedpeople. Spanning from the 1810s to the start of the Civil War, Müller reveals how urbanization, work opportunities, and the interconnectedness of free and enslaved Black people in each city determined how successfully runaways could remain invisible to authorities. Viola Franziska Müller is a historian at the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies at University of Bonn, Germany. She received her PhD from Leiden University, the Netherlands, in 2020. Studying the history of U.S. slavery and free people of African descent in Europe, she is particularly interested in the legacies of slavery and the trajectories of racism. She is the author of Escape to the City: Fugitive Slaves in the Antebellum Urban South. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On September 14, 2023, Greg May discussed his eye-opening new book, A Madman's Will: John Randolph, Four Hundred Slaves, and the Mirage of Freedom, about a sensational antebellum Virginia will that freed almost 400 people from slavery. John Randolph of Roanoke—one of Virginia's best-known statesmen—was a relentless defender of the slave states' rights, so his deathbed declaration that he wanted to free the people he enslaved took nearly everyone by surprise. But it soon emerged that Randolph had left inconsistently written wills. His lifetime of eccentric behavior gave his heirs ample room to claim that none of Randolph's wills was valid because he had been mad. The resulting litigation took twelve years. It gives us vivid insights into the intimate lives of antebellum Virginians and a wholly unexpected look at how Virginia's courts dealt with questions concerning slavery. Although the courts ultimately upheld the will that freed Randolph's slaves, the story does not have a happy ending. Virginia law required the new freedmen to leave the state, and before they could settle 3000 acres purchased for them in western Ohio, a mob of angry white farmers drove them away. Gregory May is a historian who writes about the early American republic. He graduated from William and Mary and Harvard Law School, clerked for Justice Powell on the United States Supreme Court, and then practiced law for thirty years. He is the author of Jefferson's Treasure, a political biography of Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On September 7, 2023, historians Lindsay Chervinsky, Matthew Costello, and Jeffrey Engel gave a lecture about how different generations and communities have eulogized and remembered U.S. presidents since 1799. The death of a chief executive, regardless of the circumstances—sudden or expected, still in office or decades later—is always a moment of reckoning and reflection. Mourning the Presidents brings together renowned and emerging scholars to examine how different generations and communities of Americans have eulogized and remembered U.S. presidents since George Washington's death in 1799. Over twelve individually illuminating chapters, this volume offers a unique approach to understanding American culture and politics by uncovering parallels between different generations of mourners, highlighting distinct experiences, and examining what presidential deaths can tell us about societal fissures at various critical points in the nation's history, right up to the present moment. This moderated conversation will feature Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky, Senior Fellow at the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University; Dr. Matthew Costello, Vice President and Interim Director of the David M. Rubenstein Center at the White House Historical Association; and Dr. Jeffrey Engel, Professor and Director for the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On August 17, 2023, historian Dr. Michael Lawrence Dickinson discussed his book on the Atlantic slave trade and how the thousands of captives who lived, bled, and resisted in the Black Urban Atlantic survived to form dynamic communities. In Almost Dead: Slavery and Social Rebirth in the Black Urban Atlantic, Dr. Dickinson uses cities with close commercial ties to shed light on similarities, variations, and linkages between urban Atlantic slave communities in mainland America and the Caribbean. The study adopts the perspectives of those enslaved to reveal that, in the eyes of the enslaved, the distinctions were often of degree rather than kind as cities throughout the Black Urban Atlantic remained spaces for Black oppression and resilience. The tenets of subjugation remained all too similar, as did captives' need to stave off social death and hold on to their humanity. Almost Dead argues that urban environments provided unique barriers to and avenues for social rebirth: the process by which African-descended peoples reconstructed their lives individually and collectively after forced exportation from West Africa. This was an active process of cultural remembrance, continued resistance, and communal survival. It was in these urban slave communities―within the connections between neighbors and kinfolk―that the enslaved found the physical and psychological resources necessary to endure the seemingly unendurable. Whether sites of first arrival, commodification, sale, short-term captivity, or lifetime enslavement, the urban Atlantic shaped and was shaped by Black lives. Dr. Michael Lawrence Dickinson is an associate professor of African American history at Virginia Commonwealth University. He was a 2019–20 Barra Sabbatical Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania's McNeil Center for Early American Studies. His research interests include enslaved Black life, comparative slavery, Black Atlantic studies, and urban history. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On August 3, 2023, Mills Kelly gave a lecture about his book, Virginia's Lost Appalachian Trail. For over two decades, hikers on the Appalachian Trail in Virginia walked through some of the most beautiful landscapes of the southern Appalachian Mountains. Then, in 1952, the Appalachian Trail Conference moved 300 miles of the trail more than 50 miles to the west. This change was the single largest rerouting of the AT in its long history. Lost in that move were opportunities for hikers to scramble over the Pinnacles of Dan, to sit on Fisher's Peak and gaze out over the North Carolina Piedmont, or to cross the New River on a flat-bottomed boat called Redbud for a nickel. In his latest book, historian and lifelong AT section hiker Mills Kelly tells the story of a part of the history of the Appalachian Trail that is all but forgotten by hikers, but not by the residents of the southwestern Virginia counties that the trail used to cross. Virginia's Lost Appalachian Trail is thus a history of the AT and a story of the power and persistence of historical memory in rural communities once traversed by the AT. Mills Kelly graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in history and George Washington University with a PhD in history. He is a professor of history at George Mason University where he is also the director of Mason's award-winning Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media. He is the author of Virginia's Lost Appalachian Trail. You can learn more about Mills on his website, www.millskelly.net. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On July 27, 2023, Dr. James Broomall gave a fascinating presentation on artifacts taken from the battlefields of the Civil War that helped shape the memory of the conflict. From Col. Elmer Ellsworth's death coat to the shattered tree stump of Spotsylvania, Civil War Americans actively collected and displayed objects of war. These battle pieces appeared in small museums at the turn of the twentieth century to help visitors understand the blasted landscapes from which they came. This talk will explore the lives of artifacts after they were taken from the field of action in order to understand how they informed the construction of memory. Objects with violent histories both contested and confirmed the prevailing discourse of romanticism in the nineteenth century. On the one hand, Americans clung to things connected to death and violence. On the other, Americans projected violence as regenerative to justify bloodshed. Dr. James J. Broomall is an associate professor of history at Shepherd University and the director of the George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War, which promotes a dialogue among popular and academic audiences by integrating scholarship, education, and engagement. He is a cultural historian of the Civil War era and has published many articles and essays in journals and magazines, including Common Place: The Journal of Early American Life, Civil War History, and The Journal of the Civil War Era. James is the author of Private Confederacies: The Emotional Worlds of Southern Men as Citizens and Soldiers (2019). He is currently working on a book project titled, “Battle Pieces: The Art and Artifacts of the American Civil War Era,” which explores how historical imagery and military artifacts were used to create representations of violence, war, and death. This lecture is presented in partnership with the Wilton House Museum. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On July 20, 2023, historian and curator Teasel Muir-Harmony gave a lecture on the Apollo program, told through key objects of the Space Age. Project Apollo ranks among the most bold and challenging undertakings of the 20th century. Within less than a decade, the United States leapt from suborbital spaceflight to landing humans on the moon and returning them safely back to Earth. Hundreds of thousands of people helped make these missions possible, while billions more around the world followed the flights. The material legacy of these missions is immense—with thousands of artifacts from rocket engines to spacesuits to the ephemera of life aboard a spacecraft represented in the Smithsonian's collections. Now, more than fifty years after the last lunar landing, Teasel Muir-Harmony, curator of Apollo collection at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, reassesses the history of Project Apollo through the most evocative objects of the Space Age. She examines artifacts that highlight how Project Apollo touched people's lives, both within the space program and around the world. More than space hardware alone, the objects she features reflect the deep interconnection between Project Apollo and broader developments in American society and politics. Dr. Teasel Muir-Harmony is a historian of spaceflight and the curator of the Apollo Collection at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Her research focuses on the exploration of the Moon, from debates about lunar governance to the use of spaceflight as soft power, the topic of her award-winning book, Operation Moonglow: A Political History of Project Apollo (2020). She is the author of Apollo to the Moon: A History in 50 Objects (2018) and an advisor to the television series Apollo's Moon Shot. In addition, Muir-Harmony co-organizes the Space Policy & History Forum and teaches at Georgetown University. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On July 19, 2023, historian and bestselling author, Kevin R. C. Gutzman, presented the 2023 Hazel and Fulton Chauncey Lecture. Before the consecutive two-term administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, there had only been one other trio of its type: Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe. Kevin R. C. Gutzman's The Jeffersonians is a complete chronicle of the men, known as The Virginia Dynasty, who served as president from 1801 to 1825. The three close political allies were tightly related: Jefferson and Madison were the closest of friends, and Monroe was Jefferson's former law student. Their achievements were many, including the founding of the opposition Republican Party in the 1790s, the Louisiana Purchase, and the call upon Congress in 1806 to use its constitutional power to ban the importation of enslaved people beginning on January 1, 1808. Gutzman's new book details a time in America when three presidents worked toward common goals to face challenges and strengthen our republic in a way we rarely see in American politics today. Kevin R. C. Gutzman is Professor of History at Western Connecticut State University and a faculty member at LibertyClassroom.com. He has his law degree from the University of Texas Law School and his Ph.D. in American history from the University of Virginia. His books include Thomas Jefferson—Revolutionary; James Madison and the Making of America; Virginia's American Revolution; Who Killed the Constitution? (with Thomas Woods); and The Jeffersonians: The Visionary Presidencies of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On July 13, 2023, historian and author Brent Tarter lead a discussion of his new book, Constitutional History of Virginia, covering more than 300 years of Virginia's legislative policy, from colony to statehood, revealing its political and legal backstory. In the only modern comprehensive constitutional history of any state, Brent Tarter traces Virginia history from the very beginning in 1606, when James I chartered the Virginia Company to establish a commercial outpost on the Atlantic coast of North America, through the first two decades of the twenty-first century, and the constitutions along the way that evolved and changed as the demographic, economic, political, and cultural characteristics of Virginia changed. Brent Tarter is a founding editor of the Library of Virginia's Dictionary of Virginia Biography and a cofounder of the annual Virginia Forum. He is the author of numerous books, including The Grandees of Government: The Origins and Persistence of Undemocratic Politics in Virginia; Daydreams and Nightmares: A Virginia Family Faces Secession and War; Virginians and Their Histories; and Constitutional History of Virginia. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On July 6, 2023, author Hampton Newsome delivered a lecture about the little-known United States offensive against Richmond during the Gettysburg Campaign in the summer of 1863. Sometimes referred to as the Blackberry Raid, the Union offensive was led by John Dix and provided a significant opportunity as 20,000 U.S. troops advanced on the Confederate capital and sought to cut the railroads supplying Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia in Pennsylvania. To some, Dix's campaign presented a tremendous chance for federal forces to strike hard at Richmond while Lee was in Pennsylvania. To others, it was an unnecessary lark that tied up units deployed more effectively in protecting Washington and confronting Lee's men on Northern soil. Hampton Newsome is the author of several award-winning books on the Civil War, including Richmond Must Fall: The Richmond-Petersburg Campaign, October 1864 (2012); The Fight for the Old North State: The Civil War in North Carolina, January–May 1864 (2019); and his most recent title, Gettysburg's Southern Front: Opportunity and Failure at Richmond (2022). Gettysburg's Southern Front received the Edwin C. Bearss Book Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Civil War History from the Chicago Civil War Roundtable and was named one of top 10 books of 2022 by Civil War Books and Authors. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

Misha Ewen presents a fascinating virtual discussion of her new book, “The Virginia Venture: American Colonization and English Society, 1580–1660.” Ordinary women, children, and men in England contributed to (and sometimes opposed) the colonization of the first permanent English colony in America: Jamestown. Across English society, from the streets of London to rural villages in Cornwall, people engaged with fundraising schemes and efforts to transport poor families, they grew and smoked tobacco, and they read literature and listened to sermons in church which promoted colonization in America. In ways that have largely gone unnoticed, they helped to support, or sometimes undermine, the efforts of colonizers. In this lecture, Misha Ewen will discuss her research in archives across England which help us to understand this chapter in United States history through a new lens: as history which intertwined with everyday life in towns and villages across England, with lasting consequences for society “at home” and in the “New World.” Misha Ewen is a Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Bristol. She has held fellowships at Yale University, the Huntington Library, and Folger Shakespeare Library, and has made several appearances on TV and radio, including “Inside the Tower of London.” The Virginia Venture, published by University of Pennsylvania Press in 2022, is her first book. This lecture is sponsored by The Society of Colonial Wars in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On June 8, 2023, Virginia-born historian Michael Trotti shared stories from his research on the movement from public legal executions in the South. Before 1850, all legal executions in the South were performed before crowds that could number in the thousands; the last legal public execution was in 1936. Intended to shame and intimidate, public executions after the Civil War had quite a different effect on southern Black communities. Crowds typically consisting of as many Black people as white behaved like congregations before a macabre pulpit, led in prayer and song by a Black minister on the scaffold. Black criminals often proclaimed their innocence and almost always their salvation. This turned the proceedings into public, mixed-race, and mixed-gender celebrations of Black religious authority and devotion. In response, southern states rewrote their laws to eliminate these crowds and this Black authority, ultimately turning to electrocutions in the bowels of state penitentiaries. As a wave of (extralegal) lynchings crested around the turn of the twentieth century, states also transformed the ways that the South's white-dominated governments controlled legal capital punishment, making executions into private affairs witnessed only by white people. Dr. Michael Ayers Trotti is Professor of History at Ithaca College in the Fingerlakes of New York. He was raised on the campus of Union Presbyterian Seminary in northside Richmond and attended Richmond's public schools, graduating from Richmond Community High School and then Virginia Commonwealth University with a degree in History before earning his masters and Ph.D. at UNC-Chapel Hill. He has written on sensationalism and murder in the Richmond press in his first book, The Body in the Reservoir, and on the history of lynching in the Journal of American History. His latest book is The End of Public Execution: Race, Religion, and Punishment in the American South. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On May 25, 2023, author Preston Smith gave a fascinating lecture about his father's service as the last U.S. pilot accepted into the ranks of the RAF during World War II. In a voice both timeless and distinctly greatest generational, Richmonder Parke F. Smith wrote about being the last U.S. pilot accepted into the ranks of the RAF through their training exchange program at War Eagle Field, Los Angeles. After completing their course, he sailed to England on board the HMS Queen Elizabeth, swore allegiance to the king, and was offered a coveted spot training as a fighter pilot. From 1942 to 1946, Smith flew 129 missions in North Africa, Italy, and over the North Sea, before returning home. Amazingly—blessedly—he made it home, unlike so many of his friends and comrades. It is to them he dedicated his writing. But war stories are only the half of it. Smith writes of human connection and camaraderie formed in war's trenches, revealing enduring truths through anecdotes made even more humorous from his perspective as a total outsider. Preston Smith offers an insider's view into his father's unique military service, telling a story about finding home—no matter how foreign—and fighting for it with all you've got. Parke's son, Preston Smith, collected these writings, some discovered on old “floppy” disks, some in notebooks, and some in previously published volumes, bringing them to life as the 2020 book, Spitfire: An American WWII Fighter Pilot in the RAF. Virginians will remember the Smith family flying aerobatics for Barnstormers Airshows at King's Dominion amusement park in Ashland, with Parke piloting a bi-plane, sons Jimmie and Preston manning the hot air balloon ascensions and assisting sky divers, and their mom knitting in the car. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On May 11, 2023, Rachel Beanland gave a lecture about the historical research behind her novel about the Richmond Theater Fire, The House is On Fire. Rachel Beanland's latest novel, The House Is On Fire, is based on the true story of the 1811 Richmond Theater fire and is already being called “a stunning achievement” by Jeannette Walls and “a propulsive, pulse-pounding read” by Kathleen Grissom. The novel begins the night of the fire and follows four characters—white and Black, free and enslaved—who experience the incendiary event from very different perspectives. Beanland based all four characters on the lives of real people who lived through the fire and its aftermath, and in this talk, she'll share how she used primary and secondary sources—including archival material belonging to the Virginia Museum of History and Culture—to bring these characters and others to life. Rachel Beanland's first novel, Florence Adler Swims Forever, was selected as a book club pick by Barnes & Noble, a featured debut by Amazon, an Indie Next pick by the American Booksellers Association, and one of the best books of 2020 by USA Today. It was also named a New York Times Editors' Choice and was recognized with the 2020 National Jewish Book Award for Debut Fiction. Beanland earned her MFA in creative writing from Virginia Commonwealth University and lives in Richmond, Virginia, with her family. Her newest book is The House is On Fire. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On May 5, 2023, author Craig S. Chapman spoke about the first overseas deployment of American troops, in which 4,000 colonists (including 400 from Virginia) served in the British Army on a disastrous expedition to the Caribbean. In 1740 Great Britain mounted the largest overseas expedition in its history to that time. The goal was to seize control of Spain's West Indies possessions during the so-called War of Jenkins' Ear. Because of the large number of sailors and soldiers required, Britain resorted to enlisting recruits from its North American colonies to serve in the king's army. The British launched joint land-sea attacks on Cartagena de Indias (modern day Colombia), Santiago de Cuba, and Panama, but failed in all three missions. Thirteen to fifteen thousand Britons and Americans perished on the expedition, as many as would die in the entire French and Indian War. As Capt. Lawrence Washington remarked, “War is horrid, in fact.” Craig S. Chapman is the author of "Disaster on the Spanish Main: The Tragic British-American Expedition to the West Indies during the War of Jenkins' Ear" and two other military histories, "Battle Hardened: An Infantry Officer's Harrowing Journey from D-Day to VE Day" and "More Terrible Than Victory: North Carolina's Bloody Bethel Regiment, 1861–65." This lecture was sponsored by the Society of Colonial Wars in Virginia. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On May 5, 2023, Craig S. Chapman spoke about the first overseas deployment of American troops, in which 4,000 colonists (including 400 from Virginia) served in the British Army on a disastrous expedition to the Caribbean. In 1740 Great Britain mounted the largest overseas expedition in its history to that time. The goal was to seize control of Spain's West Indies possessions during the so-called War of Jenkins' Ear. Because of the large number of sailors and soldiers required, Britain resorted to enlisting recruits from its North American colonies to serve in the king's army. The British launched joint land-sea attacks on Cartagena de Indias (modern day Colombia), Santiago de Cuba, and Panama, but failed in all three missions. Thirteen to fifteen thousand Britons and Americans perished on the expedition, as many as would die in the entire French and Indian War. As Capt. Lawrence Washington remarked, “War is horrid, in fact.” Craig S. Chapman is the author of "Disaster on the Spanish Main: The Tragic British-American Expedition to the West Indies during the War of Jenkins' Ear" and two other military histories, "Battle Hardened: An Infantry Officer's Harrowing Journey from D-Day to VE Day" and "More Terrible Than Victory: North Carolina's Bloody Bethel Regiment, 1861–65." This lecture was sponsored by the Society of Colonial Wars in Virginia. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On April 27, writer Christopher Graham, delivered a lecture about his book Faith, Race, and the Lost Cause: Confessions of a Southern Church. When a young man enamored with Confederate iconography murdered worshipers at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston in 2015, the rector at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Richmond called his congregation to examine its own racial history and former identity as the “Church of the Confederacy.” St. Paul's, in downtown Richmond, had been the home to wealthy and influential Virginians, and during the Civil War had hosted Confederate leaders, including Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis. The people of St. Paul's reveled in the notoriety and built its postwar identity around its Confederate connections. This book is a result of a congregational self-study, and chronicles how this church understood Christian teachings and practice regarding race relations from the 1840s to our present moment. Along the way, it reveals a few unexpected moments in the evolution of a Lost Cause institution, while contemplating the ways that people change over time and use historical imagination to manifest a present reality. In the end, we learn reasons for hope and sobering lessons for those who wish to do the right thing. Christopher Graham is a historian, museum curator, and member of St. Paul's. He is the author of Faith, Race, and the Lost Cause: Confessions of a Southern Church. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On April 6, 2023, historian David O. Stewart delivered a lecture on the history behind his novel, The Burning Land, the second volume of his Overstreet saga. Writing a Civil War novel inspired by an ancestor's long and tragic service in the Twentieth Maine Infantry meant considering how war changes soldiers, those closest to them, and communities. The impact on soldiers in combat has been called “soldier's heart” and “shell shock,” “battle fatigue” and “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.” Each term reflects an effort to understand the impacts of facing death, and of performing acts that most have been taught never to do, impacts that can echo through life. Sometimes fiction can bring those matters closer. David O. Stewart turned to writing after a career practicing law in Washington, D.C. He is a national bestselling and award-winning author of several previous nonfiction books on American history, including Madison's Gift: Five Partnerships That Built America and George Washington: The Political Rise of America's Founding Father. He has also written several works of historical fiction, including the Fraser and Cook mystery series (The Lincoln Deception, The Paris Deception, and The Babe Ruth Deception) and the Overstreet Saga (The New Land, The Burning Land, and The Resolution Land [forthcoming]). The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On March 16, 2023, historian Connor Williams discussed his role as lead historian for the U.S. Congress' Naming Commission, with particular emphasis on the process of recommending new names for the three Virginia forts—Fort Lee, Fort A.P. Hill, and Fort Pickett. Though the Civil War's battles were settled on the fields of our nation more than a century and half ago, the fields of our collective memories continue to be rife with conflict. This has especially proved the case over the last few years, as some Civil War monuments come down and other interpretations go up, sparking important questions. What stories should be commemorated? What features should be highlighted? What role should the Confederacy play in the history of the United States? Should we memorialize Confederates, and if so, how? How might these struggles play out on Virginia's historic and contemporary landscape? Connor Williams will discuss how our society arrived at these questions, and where we might go from here, investigating all these issues from his recent experience, and especially through the stories of the three Virginia forts for which the commission recommended new names. Before serving with the Naming Commission, Connor pursued his doctorate in history and African American Studies at Yale University, and he maintains an affiliation with both departments. He is currently completing A Race on the Frontier: African American Lives, Labors and Communities in Northern California, 1850–1915, a book project that examines the political struggles, economic opportunities, labor strategies, and networks of organization and support Black Americans forged throughout the Golden State between the Gold Rush and the Great War. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On March 1, 2023, bestselling author Douglas Brinkley delivered a lecture about his newest book, "Silent Spring Revolution: John F. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and the Great Environmental Awakening". New York Times bestselling author and acclaimed historian Douglas Brinkley chronicles the rise of environmental activism during the Long Sixties, telling a highly charged story of an indomitable generation that quite literally saved the natural world under the leadership of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon. JFK had been jolted by Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring, published in 1962. Depicting the deathblow that could be dealt by artificial chemicals, specifically DDT, the book launched an eco-revolution among the American people, which went on to inspire landmark legislation during Lyndon Johnson's and Richard Nixon's presidencies. Brinkley records these milestones of the modern environmental movement through the first Earth Day in 1970, after which every American life would forever be touched by the environmental movement of the Long Sixties (1960–1973). "Silent Spring Revolution" is crucial to understanding the battle to protect America's land, water, wildlife, and air. In a fast-evolving era when the nation is witnessing new types of environmental crises due to climate change and resource exhaustion, Douglas Brinkley's meticulously researched and deftly written book is also a clarion call, reminding us of the passionate grassroots work that still needs to be done as the spirit of the Silent Spring Revolution continues well into the twenty-first century. Douglas Brinkley is the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities and Professor of History at Rice University, a CNN Presidential Historian, and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. He works in many capacities in the world of public history, including for boards, museums, colleges, and historical societies. Six of his books were named New York Times “Notable Books of the Year” and seven became New York Times bestsellers. His books include, among many others, "The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast"; "The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America"; "Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America"; and "Silent Spring Revolution: John F. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and the Great Environmental Awakening". The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On February 16, 2023, historian Brent Morris gave a lecture examining the lives of the maroons living in the Great Dismal Swamp and their struggles for liberation. The massive and foreboding Great Dismal Swamp sprawls more than 2,000 square miles and spills over parts of Virginia and North Carolina. From the early seventeenth century, the nearly impassable Dismal frustrated settlement. However, what may have been an impediment to the expansion of slave society became an essential sanctuary for many of those who sought to escape it. In the depths of the Dismal, thousands of maroons—people who had emancipated themselves from enslavement and settled beyond the reach of enslavers—established new lives of freedom in a landscape deemed worthless and inaccessible by whites. J. Brent Morris, author of the new book Dismal Freedom: A History of the Maroons of the Great Dismal Swamp, examines the lives of these maroons and their struggles for liberation, and tells one of the most exciting yet neglected stories of American history. This is the story of resilient, proud, and determined people who made the Great Dismal Swamp their free home and sanctuary and who played an outsized role in undermining slavery through the Civil War. Dr. J. Brent Morris is Professor of History and Humanities Department Chair at the University of South Carolina Beaufort and Director of the USCB Institute for the Study of the Reconstruction Era. He is the author of several books, including Oberlin, Hotbed of Abolitionism: College, Community, and the Fight for Freedom and Equality in Antebellum America; Yes Lord I Know the Road: A Documentary History of African Americans in South Carolina, 1526–2008; A South Carolina Chronology, 1497–2020 (with Walter Edgar and C. James Taylor); and Dismal Freedom: A History of the Maroons of the Great Dismal Swamp. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On February 2, 2023, writer William Paul Lazarus gave a virtual lecture about his book, Virginia's Civil Rights Hero: The Rev. Curtis W. Harris Sr. Just three months before Curtis Harris was born, the Virginia State Legislature passed the Racial Integrity Act, which banned interracial marriage down to “a single drop” of African blood. Harris was the sixth child of an impoverished sharecropper and his wife, living in a desolate outpost of the commonwealth while the sweeping regulation was passed by the most prominent men in the state. In time, however, Harris would lead the fight against this law and many others designed to maintain the control of the white majority over minorities in Virginia and in the rest of the South. His inspirational story follows him from Dendron to Hopewell and then to the forefront of America's civil rights battles, arm in arm with the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Arrested multiple times, beaten and discriminated against, Harris persevered to change entrenched racism and become the first Black mayor in his hometown. Admired and honored, he serves as a symbol of what be accomplished by a lone individual with the courage to demand justice. William Paul Lazarus hold an M.A. in communication from Kent State University and an ABD in American Studies from Case Western Reserve University. He has published a variety of books on Americana, including The Sands of Time: 100 Years of Racing in Daytona Beach; Guide to American Culture; and Virginia's Civil Rights Hero Curtis W. Harris, Sr. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On January 19, 2023, author and journalist Michael Lee Pope traced the history of Harry Byrd's conservative political organization, which ran Virginia politics for more than half a century. The story of the Byrd Machine is one that begins after the Civil War when Senator William Mahone created the first political machine with support from Black voters and Black elected officials. That was followed by a second political machine created by Senator Thomas Staples Martin to crush the progressive movement and implement Jim Crow racism. That was the environment when a young state senator named Harry Byrd campaigned for governor and launched his own machine, which would wield power and influence over everything from who got the nod to be governor to how the state maintained racial segregation. The Byrd organization operated with a pathological hatred of debt spending, crushing the power of labor unions, and forcing its will on Black school children protesting separate and unequal facilities. The turning point came during massive resistance, a move to close public schools rather than integrate them. Michael Lee Pope is an award-winning journalist who lives in Old Town Alexandria. He has reported for NPR, the New York Daily News, Northern Virginia magazine, and the Alexandria Gazette Packet. He has a master's degree in American studies from Florida State University, and he is a former adjunct professor at Tallahassee Community College. He is the author of several books, including Hidden History of Alexandria, D.C.; Shotgun Justice: One Prosecutor's Crusade Against Crime & Corruption in Alexandria & Arlington; Wicked Northern Virginia; and, most recently, The Byrd Machine in Virginia: The Rise and Fall of a Conservative Political Organization. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On December 8, 2022, historian Jeffry D. Wert delivered a lecture on the bloody attack and defense of the “Mule Shoe” at Spotsylvania Court House on May 12, 1864. The Union assault on the Confederate Mule Shoe at Spotsylvania on May 12, 1864, ignited a struggle unlike any other during the four-year conflict. A Massachusetts soldier described the fighting as “the death-grapple of the war” as the foes killed and maimed each other often at the length of a rifle barrel for more than twenty hours. A Mississippi private said of the day, “I don't expect to go to hell, but if I do, I am sure Hell can't beat that terrible scene.” When the combat ended in the early morning darkness of May 13, roughly 17,500 men had been killed, wounded, or captured. Jeffry D. Wert is the author of many books on the Civil War, including The Sword of Lincoln: The Army of the Potomac; A Glorious Army: Robert E. Lee's Triumph, 1862–1863; Civil War Barons: The Tycoons, Entrepreneurs, Inventors, and Visionaries Who Forged Victory and Shaped a Nation; and, most recently, The Heart of Hell: The Soldier's Struggle for Spotsylvania's Bloody Angle. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On November 3, 2022, author Jack Shaum lectured on the subject of his newest book, 122 Years on the Old Bay Line. Old Bay Line is the name by which the Baltimore Steam Packet Company was best known over most of its 122-year history of nightly carrying passengers and freight on the Chesapeake Bay between Baltimore and Norfolk. These steamers are often mistakenly referred to as ferry boats, but they most certainly were not. They were large, sturdy vessels that operated year-round in all kinds of weather. They provided reliable on-time service for the traveling public and shippers alike, and were famed for their cuisine, impeccable service, and fine accommodation. By the 1950s and 1960s they were the last of their kind in the nation. When the company wrapped up operations in 1962, it was the oldest steamship company under the American flag. Jack Shaum is a retired award-winning print and broadcast journalist who spent nearly fifty years in the business. He is the former editor-in-chief of the quarterly journal of the Steamship Historical Society of America. Jack is the author and co-author of several books, including Lost Chester River Steamboats: From Chestertown to Baltimore; Majesty at Sea; Night Boat on the Potomac; and, most recently, 122 Years on the Old Bay Line. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On October 19, 2022, award-winning Civil War historian Gary W. Gallagher delivered the 2022 Hazel and Fulton Chauncey Lecture. Lt. Gen. Jubal A. Early's 1864 Valley Campaign in the summer and autumn of 1864 reached a decisive climax in the battle of Cedar Creek on October 19. Far less famous than "Stonewall" Jackson's more limited operations in the Valley during May–June 1862, Early's featured a series of significant battles against a powerful Union army under Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan. This lecture will examine Early and Sheridan as commanders, explore the military, economic, and political impact of the campaign, and assess why Jackson's campaign looms much larger in historical memory. Gary W. Gallagher is John L. Nau III Professor in the History of the American Civil War Emeritus Director, John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History. He is nationally renowned Civil War historian and the author and editor of numerous books and articles. His most recent book, a collection of essays on all aspects of the Civil War, is The Enduring Civil War: Reflections on the Great American Crisis. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On October 13, 2022, historian Robert Pierce Forbes took a fascinating look at Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia. When Thomas Jefferson used the term “my country,” he almost always meant Virginia. Nowhere is this truer than in his only published book, "Notes on the State of Virginia." Released while the United States was just taking shape, Notes profoundly influenced the perception of the infant republic by foreigners and countrymen alike. Through his subtle but powerful rhetoric, Jefferson made Virginia stand in for America as a whole, while revising the meaning of “all men are created equal,” thereby writing Americans of African descent out of the narrative of American liberty. Dr. Robert Pierce Forbes taught U.S. history at the University of Connecticut and was the founding associate director of Yale's Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition. He is the author of "The Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath: Slavery and the Meaning of America" and the editor of "Notes on the State of Virginia: An Annotated Edition." The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On October 13, 2022, Dr. Philip Levy gave a fascinating lecture on the principal archaeological sites associated with George Washington and what they say individually and collectively about his life and career. No figure in American history has generated more public interest or sustained more scholarly research around his various homes and habitations than has George Washington. The Permanent Resident is the first book to bring the principal archaeological sites of Washington's life together under one cover, revealing what they say individually and collectively about Washington's life and career and how Americans have continued to invest these places with meaning. Two hundred years after his death, at the sites of his many abodes, Washington remains an inescapable presence. The Permanent Resident guides readers through the places where Washington lived and in which Americans have memorialized him, speaking to issues that have defined and challenged America from his time to our own. Philip Levy is Professor of History at the University of South Florida and the author of "George Washington Written on the Land: Nature, Memory, Myth, and Landscape" and "The Permanent Resident: Excavations and Explorations of George Washington's Life." The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On September 22, 2022, historian James Scott discussed his book about the controversial firebombing of Tokyo on March 9, 1945. Seven minutes past midnight on March 9, 1945, nearly 300 American B-29s thundered into the skies over Tokyo. Their payloads of incendiaries ignited a more than 1,800-degree firestorm that liquefied asphalt and vaporized thousands; sixteen square miles of the city were flattened and more than 100,000 men, women, and children were killed. Black Snow is the story of this devastating operation, orchestrated by Major General Curtis LeMay, who famously remarked: “If we lose, we'll be tried as war criminals.” James M. Scott reconstructs in granular detail that horrific night, and describes the development of the B-29, the capture of the Marianas for use as airfields, and the change in strategy from high-altitude daylight “precision” bombing to low-altitude nighttime incendiary bombing. Most importantly, the raid represented a significant moral shift for America, marking the first-time commanders deliberately targeted civilians―which helped pave the way for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki five months later. James M. Scott is the author of several books on World War II, including Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor, a Pulitzer Prize finalist; Rampage: MacArthur, Yamashita; and, most recently, Black Snow: Curtis LeMay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

Best-selling author and journalist Kristen Green joins Dr. Carolivia Herron to discuss the subject of Green's book and Herron's ancestor, Mary Lumpkin, an enslaved woman who liberated an infamous slave jail and transformed it into one of the nation's first HBCUs. The Devil's Half Acre: The Untold Story of How One Woman Liberated the South's Most Notorious Slave Jail, draws on years of research to tell the extraordinary story of Mary Lumpkin, an enslaved woman who blazed a path of liberation for thousands. She was forced to have the children of a brutal slave trader and live on the premises of his slave jail, known as the “Devil's Half Acre.” When she inherited the jail after the death of her slaveholder, she transformed it into “God's Half Acre,” a school where Black men could fulfill their dreams. It still exists today as Virginia Union University, one of America's first Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Presenter Biographies: Kristen Green is a reporter and the author of The Devil's Half Acre and the New York Times bestseller Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County. She has worked as a journalist for two decades for newspapers including the Boston Globe, the San Diego Union-Tribune, and the Richmond Times-Dispatch. She holds a master's in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School and lives in Richmond with her husband and two daughters. Carolivia Herron is an African American Jewish author, educator and publisher living in Washington, DC. She received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Pennsylvania, and has held multiple professorial appointments, including at Harvard University and the College of William and Mary. Currently she teaches Classics in the English Department of Howard University and has recently been commissioned to write a play about her ancestry. Two of her children's books, Nappy Hair and Always An Olivia, highlight her Virginia heritage. Carolivia Herron is a descendant of Mary Lumpkin.

Join historian Terry Alford for a fascinating lecture about his newest book, In the Houses of Their Dead: The Lincolns, the Booths, and the Spirits. Two families, one at the nation's political summit and one at its theatrical, were bound together in the Civil War period by their fascination with spiritualism. Abraham and Mary Lincoln turned to the seance table when their son Willie Lincoln died in 1862. Edwin Booth and his brother John Wilkes were similarly attracted to the otherworld by the death of Edwin's wife Mary Devlin in 1863. Although there were many mediums in the country, the number of distinguished intermediaries to the other side was limited, and the two families shared several of the most gifted ones. No medium was more controversial than Charles J. Colchester, who astounded the Lincolns with his powers while being an intimate friend of John Wilkes Booth at the same time. Colchester repeatedly warned Lincoln to be careful. Would the president, who received many such warnings over the years, finally listen to the one that mattered? Terry L. Alford is Professor of History Emeritus at Northern Virginia Community College. He is the author of several books, including Prince among Slaves: The True Story of an African Prince Sold into Slavery in the American South, which was made into a PBS documentary in 2007; Fortune's Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth, a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist; and In the Houses of Their Dead: The Lincolns, the Booths, and the Spirits. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

Join writer Derek Baxter for a lecture about his book, In Pursuit of Jefferson: Traveling through Europe with the Most Perplexing Founding Father. In 1788, when two young countrymen asked Thomas Jefferson for advice on where to go on their own journey, he wrote them a 5,000-word letter he entitled Hints to Americans Travelling in Europe, instructing them where to go, what to do, and how to bring knowledge from their travels back to newborn America. More than two hundred years later, Baxter used the miniguide to embark on a grand tour of his own, following Jefferson's advice through six countries and absorbing countless lessons while recovering from his own personal crisis. Yet along the way, what Baxter learns isn't always what Jefferson had in mind—including how Jefferson could never escape the fact that the work of enslaved people lay behind all his travels and projects. In Pursuit of Jefferson is at once a personal story of a life-changing trip across Europe and a profound personal journey as well as an unflinching look at one of America's most controversial founding fathers. Written with immersive historical detail, a sense of humor, and a boundless heart, Baxter explores how we can be better at moving forward only by first looking back. Derek Baxter graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in history and is an attorney. After years of research, he made nine separate trips abroad on Jefferson's trail. In Pursuit of Jefferson is his first book. You can follow his adventures with Thomas Jefferson at www.jeffersontravels.com. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

Join Catherine Ingrassia for a fascinating discussion of her latest book, “Domestic Captivity and the British Subject, 1660–1750.” Indentured servitude was common in colonial America. When voluntary, it allegedly offered dispossessed British subjects the opportunity to improve their situation after their term. However, the practice of kidnapping or “spiriting away” people into involuntary indentured servitude occurred with great regularly. This talk discusses two fictional representations of the case of James Annesley (1715–1760). The heir to an Irish barony, Annesley's uncle had him secretly kidnapped as a child and sold as an indentured servant in Virginia where he labored for fourteen years. When Annesley finally returned to England, he was the subject of more than sixty publications in London all of which emphasized his role as an “indentured slave.” These British narratives about colonial America give voice to persistent anxieties about the potential captivity of British subjects on colonial soil. More forcefully, they also reveal a concern about the potential erosion of male British identity within a corrosive climate where ignorant Americans masters hold them captive. The narratives strategically represent the American masters as particularly brutal to compensative for the vast British financial interests in the West Indies, the site of notoriously horrific conditions for enslaved people. In addition to discussing Annesley's captivity, the talk will also consider other states of domestic captivity common within England and elaborate upon the especially threatening conditions for women held captive within a colonial, domestic space. Catherine E. Ingrassia is Professor and Chair in the Department of English at Virginia Commonwealth University. In addition to her most recent book Domestic Captivity and the British Subject, 1660–1750, she is the author or editor of six other books including Authorship, Commerce and Gender in Eighteenth-Century England: A Culture of Paper Credit and the Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Women Writers. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

Was the American Revolution really a revolution? Was George Washington a great general? Was the American victory a miracle or inevitable? Dr. Joseph Ellis will explore these questions and more in his lecture on "The Cause," complicating conventional narratives to present a richly nuanced vision of this foundational moment in American history. A landmark work of narrative history, "The Cause" challenges the story we have long told ourselves about our origins as a people, and as a nation. Joseph Ellis is one of the nation's leading scholars of American history. A professor of history, he has taught in the Leadership Studies program at Williams College, the Commonwealth Honors College at the University of Massachusetts, Mount Holyoke College, and the United States Military Academy at West Point. Ellis's commentaries have been featured on CSPAN, CNN, and PBS's Lehrer News Hour, and he has appeared in several documentaries on early America. The author of twelve books, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for "Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation" and won the National Book Award for "American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson." Joseph Ellis's latest work is "The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773–1783." The content and opinions expressed in this presentation are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

Join historian Daniel Thorp for a lecture about his latest book, In The True Blue's Wake: Slavery and Freedom among the Families of Smithfield Plantation. In 1759, William Preston purchased sixteen enslaved Africans brought to Maryland aboard the True Blue, an English slave ship. Over the next century, the Prestons enslaved more than 200 individuals and used their labor to establish and operate Smithfield, the family's Virginia seat, and the plantations into which it was later divided. In the True Blue's Wake tells the story of the men and women who were enslaved at Smithfield between its establishment in 1774 and the abolition of slavery there in 1865: who they were and how they and their families endured the experience of slavery. It then follows those families after their emancipation as they moved throughout the United States and explores how they and their descendants used their families' new freedom to advance in the world. Dr. Daniel B. Thorp is an associate professor of history at Virginia Tech. He is the author of several books, including Facing Freedom: An African American Community in Virginia from Reconstruction to Jim Crow; and In the True Blue's Wake: Slavery and Freedom among the Families of Smithfield Plantation. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

Transportation was not merely a way to move about the state or country. The ability to travel across the United States became highly restricted as early as the Scott v. Stanford (1857) case, which denied Dred Scott's claim to freedom and citizenship after relocating from a free to a slave state. Nearly a century later, the Montgomery Bus Boycott helped spark what we now know as the classic phase of the civil rights movement, and bussing became paramount in the battle against massive resistance to school desegregation. In many ways, Virginia sits at the crossroads of these three distinct struggles, and Black Virginians helped to change the course of the country toward a more equal and accessible way of life. This talk recalls the lives and experiences of John Mitchell, Jr., Irene Morgan, Pauli Murray, and Bruce Boynton as they challenged transportation segregation in Virginia while simultaneously dismantling anti-Blackness in America's social landscape.

Join Curator Karen Sherry for a conversation with William and Ann Oppenhimer, long-time collectors and advocates of folk art, as they share stories about their work in the field and about the objects currently on view at the VMHC in "Visionary Virginians: The Folk Art Collection of William and Ann Oppenhimer."

Join historian Samantha Rosenthal for a lecture about an LGBTQ community in Roanoke, Virginia, and how queer people today think about the past and how history lives on in the present. Queer history is a living practice. Talk to any group of LGBTQ people today, and they will not agree on what story should be told. In her book Living Queer History, Samantha Rosenthal tells the story of a small city on the edge of Appalachia. Interweaving historical analysis, theory, and memoir, Rosenthal tells the story of their own journey—coming out and transitioning as a transgender woman—in the midst of working on a community-based history project that documented a multigenerational southern LGBTQ community. Based on over forty interviews with LGBTQ elders, Living Queer History explores how queer people today think about the past and how history lives on in the present. Gregory Samantha Rosenthal (she/her or they/them) is associate professor of history and coordinator of the Public History Concentration at Roanoke College. She is co-founder of the Southwest Virginia LGBTQ+ History Project, a nationally recognized queer public history initiative. Her work has received recognition from the National Council on Public History, the Oral History Association, the Committee on LGBT History, the American Society for Environmental History, and the Working Class Studies Association. Samantha is the author of two books, Beyond Hawaiʻi: Native Labor in the Pacific World (2018) and Living Queer History: Remembrance and Belonging in a Southern City (2021). The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

Join author Jan Meck for a thoughtful talk and discussion of their new book, The Life and Legacy of Enslaved Virginian Emily Winfree. The Life and Legacy of Enslaved Virginian Emily Winfree tells the true story of an African American woman who was the embodiment of courage, love, and determination. Given a small cottage after the Civil War by her former master and father of her children, she raised her family through the hardest of times, always keeping them together. The author will be joined during the program by moderator Joseph Rogers, Manager of Partnerships & Community Engagement at the VMHC, Dr. Emily Jones, great-great-granddaughter of Emily Winfree, and Ana Edwards, Public Historian, Chair of the Sacred Ground Historical Reclamation Project, information about which can be found at sacredgroundproject.net. Dr. Jan Meck is a retired NASA scientist, and Virginia Refo is a retired foster care and adoption social worker and an experienced genealogist. Since retiring both have been docents and researchers at the Virginia Museum of History & Culture. Dr. Emily J. Jones is the great-great-granddaughter of Emily Winfree. She believes her ancestors have directly influenced her work. Currently, she serves as the Deputy Director of the Center on Culture, Race & Equity and Director of the New York State Education Department's Technical Assistance Partnership for Equity (TAP Equity) at Bank Street College of Education in New York City. Dr. Jones holds a PhD in Education Policy from Rutgers University, an MS in Elementary Education from Mercy College, and a BA in Economics from Spelman College. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On April 20, 2022, historian James Horn delivered the 2022 Stuart G. Christian, Jr. Lecture about his book, A Brave and Cunning Prince: The Great Chief Opechancanough and the War for America. In 1561, an Indian youth was abducted from Virginia by Spanish explorers and taken to Spain. Called by the Spanish Paquiquineo and subsequently Don Luís, he was introduced to King Philip II in Madrid, as well as to influential Catholic prelates and courtiers, before being sent back to America to help with the conversion of Indian peoples. In Mexico City, he converted to Catholicism and after many years was eventually able to secure his return to his homeland on the York River as a guide to a small group of Jesuits. There, he quickly organized a war party to destroy the mission and everyone associated with it. During the remainder of the sixteenth century, he and his brother, Powhatan, built a massive chiefdom that stretched from the James River to the Potomac, and from the coast to the piedmont. When the English arrived in Virginia in 1607, he and his brother chief launched a series of attacks on the settlers in an attempt to drive them out. These wars, the first Anglo-Indian wars in North America, spanned the greater part of the next four decades. Known by the English as Opechancanough, he was ultimately unsuccessful but would come closer than any of his peers in early America to succeeding. He survived to be nearly 100 years old and died, as he lived, fighting European colonists. James Horn is the president of the Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation at Historic Jamestowne, the original site of the first permanent English settlement in America. He is author and editor of eight books on early America, including 1619: Jamestown and the Forging of American Democracy and A Land as God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America. His most recent book, A Brave and Cunning Prince: The Great Chief Opechancanough and the War for America, was published last November. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

Join historian Bruce A. Ragsdale on December 9, 2021 for a discussion of his On December 9, 2021, historian Bruce A. Ragsdale presented a lecture about his book, Washington at the Plow: The Founding Farmer and the Question of Slavery. For more than forty years, George Washington was dedicated to an innovative and experimental course of farming at Mount Vernon, where he sought to demonstrate the public benefits of recent advances in British agriculture. The methods of British agricultural improvement also shaped Washington's management of enslaved labor, and he was at the forefront to efforts to adapt slavery to new kinds of farming. His ultimate inability to reconcile the ideals of enlightened farming with coerced labor and race-based slavery was critical to his decision to free the enslaved people under his control. Washington at the Plow significantly enriches the more familiar biography of the revolutionary general and first president and offers a new perspective on the founders' response to abolitionist appeals. Bruce A. Ragsdale served for twenty years as director of the Federal Judicial History Office at the Federal Judicial Center. He has been a fellow at the Washington Library at Mount Vernon and the International Center for Jefferson Studies. He is the author of A Planters' Republic: The Search for Economic Independence in Revolutionary Virginia and Washington at the Plow: The Founding Farmer and the Question of Slavery. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.