Episode Summary:

This episode looks at communities that have suffered neglect from official history, and the example of African American landmarks and burial grounds in Virginia. Some families and communities have pushed to reclaim their place and spaces, often using tools employed earlier by the Federal Writers’ Project. Project workers often consulted landmarks and cemetery headstones to present a fuller picture of local history.  

In southern states, the Writers’ Project encountered the Lost Cause, the effort emerging after the Civil War that aimed to rewrite the war’s meaning and origins in slavery. The myth shaped the environment for white writers of the WPA Guide to Virginia, and it continues to hold influence even today. Yet the field research underlying the WPA guide – the details the federal writers uncovered in records, interviews and landmarks – as well as another Project publication, The Negro in Virginia, provide a way to untangle the Lost Cause myth. We probe that history with poet Kiki Petrosino as she researches her family’s Virginia history, and with historians at the Library of Virginia, the Alexandria Black History Museum and the University of Richmond.

Speakers:

Audrey Davis, historian

Julian Hayter, historian

Gregg Kimball, historian

Kiki Petrosino, poet

Alton Darden, Helping Hand Cemetery trustee

Maurice Darden, Helping Hand Cemetery trustee

Dolores Peterson, Helping Hand Cemetery trustee

Links and Resources:

Helping Hand Cemetery Club

"Unmarked" documentary

Photo Essay about East End Cemetery by Kiki Petrosino and Brian Palmer

Encyclopedia Virginia entry on the Lost Cause

Alexandria Black History Museum

Library of Virginia

Further Reading:

The Negro in Virginia by the Federal Writers’ Project 

White Blood by Kiki Petrosino

Rewriting America: New Essays on the Federal Writers’ Project, edited by Sara Rutkowski

How the Word is Passed by Clint Smith

The Dream is Lost by Julian Hayter

American City, Southern Place by Gregg Kimball 

Credits:

Host: Chris Haley

Director: Andrea Kalin

Producers: Andrea Kalin, David A. Taylor, James Mirabello

Writer: David A. Taylor

Editors: Ethan Oser and Julie Chalhoub

Story Editor: Michael May

Additional Voices: Skip Coblyn, James Mirabello, Jared Buggage, Jerry Ray and Danielle Nance 

Featuring music and archival material from: 

Pond5

Library of Congress

National Archives and Records Administration

NPR

WUSA9

ABC News

News2Share

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Produced with support from:

National Endowment for the Humanities

Virginia Humanities

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