VMHC Lectures

On October 1, 2019, Kevin M. Levin delivered a Banner Lecture entitled, “Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth.”

More than 150 years after the end of the Civil War, scores of websites, articles, and organizations repeat claims that anywhere between 500 and 100,000 free and enslaved African Americans fought willingly as soldiers in the Confederate army. But as Kevin M. Levin argues, such claims would have shocked anyone who served in the army during the war itself. Levin explains that imprecise contemporary accounts, poorly understood primary-source material, and other misrepresentations helped fuel the rise of the black Confederate myth. Moreover, Levin shows that belief in the existence of black Confederate soldiers largely originated in the 1970s, a period that witnessed both a significant shift in how Americans remembered the Civil War and a rising backlash against African Americans’ gains in civil rights and other realms.

Kevin M. Levin is an award-winning educator and historian based in Boston, Massachusetts. He has written extensively about the American Civil War and has spoken across the country on the current controversy surrounding Confederate monuments. Levin is the author several books, including Remembering The Battle of the Crater: War as Murder; Interpreting the Civil War at Museums and Historic Sites; and Searching For Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth.

This presentation was presented in partnership with the American Civil War 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 September 12, 2019, Brian J. Daugherity delivered the Banner Lecture, “Keep on Keeping On: The NAACP and the Implementation of Brown v. Board of Education in Virginia.” The lecture coincided with the museum’s exhibition, "Determined: The 400-Year Struggle for Black Equality."

Virginia played a central role in the process of school desegregation. The state was home to one of the five cases decided in Brown v. Board of Education—Davis v. Prince Edward County, filed after a student strike against inferior school facilities in Farmville.

After the Brown decision was handed down in 1954, Virginia helped to launch and guide the movement against school desegregation, known as massive resistance. Despite this, proponents of change sought the implementation of Brown v. Board of Education in the commonwealth, and in the 1960s their efforts led to additional legal victories that sped up the process of school desegregation nationwide.

Brian Daugherity’s latest book, "Keep On Keeping On," tells the story of the implementation of Brown v. Board of Education in Virginia. It examines the official reaction to Brown and the massive resistance movement but focuses on the overlooked strategies and efforts of the proponents of school desegregation. The story highlights the role of the Virginia State Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Dr. Brian J. Daugherity, associate professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth University, is an expert on the civil rights era in the commonwealth. He is the coeditor with Charles C. Bolton of "With All Deliberate Speed: Implementing Brown v. Board of Education" and with Brian Grogin of "A Little Child Shall Lead Them: A Documentary Account of the Struggle for School Desegregation in Prince Edward County, Virginia," and the author of "Keep On Keeping On: The NAACP and the Implementation of Brown v. Board of Education 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 August 29, 2019, Alexander F. Barnes delivered the Banner Lecture, “Play ball! America's Doughboys and the National Pastime in the Great War.”

In 1917, there were two kinds of men in America: professional baseball players, and men who wanted to be professional ball players. With America’s entry into the Great War, these two groups merged as the United States built a mighty force to fight in Europe.

"Play Ball!" recounts the story of how baseball played an important role in entertaining the troops while contributing to their physical fitness. It also tells the story of the many major and minor league ballplayers who traded their team uniforms for Army khaki and Navy blue. For some, this trade would cause them to make the ultimate sacrifice in the service of their country.

Playing wherever they could find enough room to throw a ball, the Doughboys brought the game with them into the front lines and then into the occupation of Germany. Sharing their military service, in combat and on the baseball diamond, were several famous professional ball players, managers, lawyers, politicians, and even an umpire.

Alexander F. Barnes served in the Marine Corps and Army National Guard. He retired in 2015 after thirty years of service. He is currently the Virginia National Guard Command historian. Al is the author and coauthor of several books, including Let's Go!: The History of the 29th Infantry Division 1917–2001; To Hell with the Kaiser, Vol. I: America Prepares for War, 1916–1918 (2 volumes); Forgotten Soldiers of World War I: America's Immigrant Doughboys (with Peter L. Belmonte); and Play Ball!: Doughboys and Baseball during the Great War (with Peter L. Belmonte).

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 22, 2019, Dr. Spencer Crew delivered the banner lecture, "Thurgood Marshall: A Life in American History."

Thurgood Marshall is best remembered as the first African American Supreme Court Justice. But to only remember him in that way is to do him an injustice. He had a remarkable and significant career before his appointment to the Supreme Court. He worked as a lawyer for the NAACP for several decades. During that time, he acquired the title of “Mr. Civil Rights” for his efforts combating laws and litigating court cases detrimental to African Americans. Why Marshall decided to take on this task and the impact he had on American society during the course of his career is important for every American to know and appreciate.

Dr. Spencer R. Crew is Interim Director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. He has worked in public history institutions for more than twenty-five years, having served as president of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center for six years and worked at the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution for twenty years. Dr. Crew is the author of several books, including "Field to Factory: Afro-American Migration 1915–1940"; "Black Life in Secondary Cities: A Comparative Analysis of the Black Communities of Camden and Elizabeth, N.J., 1860–1920"; and "Thurgood Marshall: A Life in American 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.

Enslaved Virginians sought freedom from the time they were first brought to the Jamestown colony in 1619. Acts of self-emancipation were aided by Virginian’s waterways, which became part of the network of the Underground Railroad in the years before the Civil War. Watermen willing to help escaped slaves made eighteenth-century Norfolk a haven for freedom seekers. Famous nineteenth-century escapees like Shadrach Minkins and Henry “Box” Brown were helped by the Underground Railroad. Enslaved men like Henry Lewey, known as “Bluebeard,” aided freedom seekers as conductors, and black and white sympathizers acted as station masters.

In this banner lecture on July 25, 2019, historian Cassandra Newby-Alexander narrates the ways that enslaved Virginians used Virginian’s waterways to achieve humanity’s dream of freedom.

Cassandra L. Newby-Alexander serves as a professor of history and the director of the Joseph Jenkins Roberts Center for the African Diaspora at Norfolk State University. She has spearheaded the 1619 Making of America conference, which seeks to transform the narrative about the role of early Africans in the evolution of America. She is a member of the advisory committee for the VMHC’s exhibition, "Determined: The 400-Year Struggle for Black Equality" and is the author of several books, including "An African American History of the Civil War in Hampton Roads"; "Voices from within the Veil: African Americans and the Experience of Democracy"; and, most recently, "Virginia Waterways and the Underground Railroad."

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 1, 2019, Ben Wynne delivered the 2019 Hazel and Fulton Chauncey Lecture, "The Life and Times of Henry Stuart Foote, Southern Unionist and 'The Man Who Punched Jefferson Davis.'"

This lecture presents the life of antebellum politician Henry Stuart Foote (1804–1880), one of the most vocal, volatile, and well-traveled politicians of the nineteenth century, and “The Man Who Punched Jefferson Davis.” Born in Virginia, Foote moved to Alabama and then Mississippi during the 1830s and made a name for himself as a gifted and zealously aggressive lawyer and political personality. He was an eyewitness to most of the great historical events of his lifetime and he opined on everything. He helped raise money for the Texas Revolution, represented Mississippi in the United States Senate and as governor, played an important role in negotiation over the Compromise of 1850, served as a Confederate congressman from Tennessee and also affected politics in California and Louisiana. He wrote numerous books and until his death remained one of Jefferson Davis’s most caustic critics.

A native of Florence, Mississippi, Ben Wynne earned an undergraduate degree at Millsaps College, a master’s degree in history at Mississippi College, and a doctorate in history from the University of Mississippi. He has taught at the University of Mississippi, Valdosta State University, and Florida State University, and is currently in his thirteenth year as professor of history at the University of North Georgia in Gainesville, Georgia, where he specializes in antebellum American studies, the American South, and the Civil War era. He has written numerous books and other material related to the South and southern culture, including "A Hard Trip: A History of the 15th Mississippi Infantry, CSA"; "Mississippi’s Civil War: A Narrative History"; "In Tune: Charley Patton, Jimmie Rodgers and the Roots of American Music"; and "The Man Who Punched Jefferson Davis: The Political Life of Henry Stuart Foote, Southern Unionist."

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 25, 2019, Jennifer Potter delivered the Banner Lecture, “The Jamestown Brides: The Story of the Virginia Company's Trade in Young English Wives.” In 1621, fifty-six English women from good families crossed the Atlantic in response to the Virginia Company of London's call for maids “young and uncorrupt” to make wives for the planters of its new colony in Virginia. One in six of the maids could even claim gentry status. Although promised a free choice of husband, they were in effect being traded into marriage for a bride price of 150 pounds of best leaf tobacco, the profits to flow to individual investors. How did the company justify such a trade, and why did the women submit to such a risky enterprise? Delving into company and court records, ballads, pamphlets, sermons, letters, and original sources on both sides of the Atlantic, Potter turns detective as she tracks the women from their communities in England to their new homes in Virginia, illuminating women's lives in early modern England and in the New World. The Jamestown Brides is Jennifer Potter's tenth book. Appointed as one of the first Royal Literary Fund Fellows at the British Library, she first came to Virginia to research Strange Blooms, The Curious Lives and Adventures of the John Tradescants, her celebrated biography of the early seventeenth-century plantsmen, collectors of curiosities, and gardeners to King Charles I. She has also written novels, works about gardens and landscapes, and two cultural histories of flowers: The Rose, A True History and Seven Flowers and How They Shaped Our World. A long-time reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement, Potter has enjoyed writing fellowships at leading British universities and at Hawthornden Castle in Scotland. She is currently a Royal Literary Fund Consultant Fellow and an Archaeology Ambassador for the Museum of London Archaeology. This lecture was cosponsored with the Society of Colonial Wars in the State 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 5, 2019, Stewart McLaurin delivered the Banner Lecture, “Scottish Stone Masons and Virginia Stone.”

In the 1790s, the stone harvested from Government Island in Stafford, Virginia, was used to construct the White House and the Capitol. Today, the remaining outcroppings of rock still stand on the island and the Aquia stone walls are all that is left of the original White House, witnesses to White House history. This lecture will consider the stones of the White House and the stonemasons from Scotland who created the finest stone carving in eighteenth-century America.

Stewart McLaurin is the president of the White House Historical Association. His career spans the non-profit, education, and public policy fields. Over the past thirty years, he has held senior positions with George Washington’s Mount Vernon, The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, the Motion Picture Association, Georgetown University, American Red Cross, and the Federal Government.

This lecture is cosponsored with the White House Historical Association.

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 23, 2019, Albert Louis Zambone delivered the Banner Lecture, “Daniel Morgan, Virginian.”

By the end of his life, Daniel Morgan had variously been brigadier general of the Continental Army, major general of the Virginia Militia, a winner of the Congressional Gold Medal, a congressman, and architect of the “American Cannae,” the battle of Cowpens. But the status for which he seems to have worked his entire life, from the moment he walked into the Shenandoah Valley as a homeless boy, was to be a Virginian and a member of the Virginia gentry. In this lecture, Albert Louis Zambone will focus on Morgan’s life of striving to get ahead in colonial and revolutionary Virginia.

Dr. Albert Louis Zambone earned his Ph.D. in history from the University of Oxford and has received a number of scholarships and awards in the field of early American history, including a Mellon Fellowship at the Virginia Historical Society. He hosts and produces the popular audience-format podcast, Historically Thinking. Zambone is the author of Daniel Morgan: A Revolutionary Life.

This lecture was cosponsored with the Society of Colonial Wars in the State 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 May 14, 2019, author Nigel Hamilton delivered the George C. Marshall Foundation Lecture.

In honor of the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings, it is fitting we remember the men who ensured the great invasion took place: the U.S. commander in chief, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and his chief of staff of the U.S. Army, General George C. Marshall. Based on his new book, War and Peace, Nigel Hamilton tells how the two leaders overcame bitter British reluctance to bring an end to Europe’s long nightmare.

Nigel Hamilton is a best-selling and award-winning biographer of President John F. Kennedy, General Bernard “Monty” Montgomery, and President Bill Clinton, among other subjects. He is a senior fellow at the McCormack Graduate School, University of Massachusetts, Boston. Hamilton's most recent book, War and Peace: FDR’s Final Odyssey: D-Day to Yalta, 1943–1945, is the final volume of his trilogy on how Franklin Roosevelt won World War II as U.S. commander in chief.

The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.