VMHC Lectures

On December 10, 2020, Ralph Hambrick delivered the banner lecture, “Transforming the James River in Richmond”

The James River has always been the centerpiece of Richmond, but by the mid-twentieth century it had been abused and neglected. Today, the river draws visitors to its wooded shorelines, restored canal, and feisty rapids. At the local level, this transformation was the result of citizen action, public-private partnerships, difficult decisions by governmental leaders, and the hard work of thousands of advocates and volunteers. In this Banner Lecture on December 10, 2020, local author Ralph Hambrick chronicles the events, projects, and controversies that brought about the dramatic change.

Ralph Hambrick, professor emeritus in public policy and administration at Virginia Commonwealth University, is a member and former chair of the Falls of the James Scenic River Advisory Committee and a member and former co-chair of the James River Advisory Council. He is a former whitewater canoe instructor, raft guide and an all-around river enjoyer who does his writing from a home office overlooking the James River. He is the author of Transforming the James River in Richmond.

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

Nov 10, 2020, Dr. Peter R. Henriques delivered the banner lecture, “What Made George Washington Tick”

George Washington very much wanted to be famous. Yet, he did not wish to be known, and there is a remoteness about him that will perhaps always remain. The fact that we cannot fully understand him, however, does not mean we cannot understand him better than we do. While recognizing the dangers involved, in this Banner Lecture on November 10, 2020, historian Peter Henriques utilizes the insights of psychoanalyst Carl Jung to better understand what made George Washington tick.

Dr. Peter R. Henriques is Professor of History, Emeritus, from George Mason University. He taught American and Virginia history with a special emphasis

on the Virginia Founding Fathers, especially George Washington. He is the author of The Death of George Washington: He Died as He Lived; Realistic Visionary: A Portrait of George Washington; and First and Always: A New Portrait of George Washington.

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 Nov 4, 2020, Dr. Christian Kelle delivered the banner lecture, “The Great Partnership: Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson”

This Banner Lecture on November 4, 2020 by historian Christian Keller tells the story of the unique relationship between Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. Jackson. Why were Generals Lee and Jackson so successful in their partnership in trying to win the war for the South? In Keller’s book, The Great Partnership, he challenges how we think about Confederate strategic decision-making and the value of personal relationships among senior leaders responsible for organizational survival.

Dr. Christian Keller is the Dwight D. Eisenhower Chair of National Security and Professor of History in the Department of National Security and Strategy at the United States Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He is the author and coauthor of several books, including Chancellorsville and the Germans: Nativism, Ethnicity, and Civil War Memory; Damn Dutch: Pennsylvania Germans at Gettysburg; and, most recently, The Great Partnership: Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and the Fate of the Confederacy.

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 16, 2020, delivered the banner lecture, “Restoring America’s Most Significant Gardens”

The story of the Garden Club of Virginia is colorful, courageous, and impressive. It is not a coincidence that 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the women’s suffrage movement, heralding a new age of female participation in American civic life. Concern for the environment and efforts to preserve and restore Virginia’s significant public gardens were founding principles of the female-led organization and are more relevant today than ever before.

In this Banner Lecture on September 16, 2020, Matt Peterschmidt, Director of Landscapes and Security at Stratford Hall, Dr. Eric Proebsting, Director of Archaeology at Poplar Forest, and Betsy Worthington, member of the Restoration Committee of the Garden Club of Virginia, discuss the legacy of the Garden Club of Virginia in the context of two current projects at Stratford Hall and Poplar Forest, and their unexpected connection to each other.

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 10,2020, Nicole Maurantonio delivered the banner lecture, “Confederate Exceptionalism: Civil War Myth and Memory in the Twenty-First Century”

How do so-called neo-Confederates distance themselves from the actions and beliefs of white supremacists while clinging to the very symbols and narratives that tether the Confederacy to the history of racism and oppression in America? In this Banner Lecture on September 10, 2020, Nicole Maurantonio explores how the answer is bound up in the myth of Confederate exceptionalism—a myth whose components, proponents, and meaning she explores in her lecture.

Nicole Maurantonio is associate professor of rhetoric and communication studies and American studies at the University of Richmond. She is the author of Confederate Exceptionalism: Civil War Myth and Memory in the Twenty-First Century and coeditor (with David W. Park) of Communicating Memory & 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 13, 2020, Nicole Myers Turner delivered the banner lecture, “Soul Liberty: The Evolution of Black Religious Politics in Postemancipation Virginia”

That churches are one of the most important cornerstones of black political organization is a commonplace. In her new history of African American Protestantism and American politics at the end of the Civil War, "Soul Liberty: The Evolution of Black Religious Politics in Postemancipation Virginia," Nicole Myers Turner challenges the idea of black churches as having always been politically engaged. In this Banner Lecture on August 13, 2020, Turner uses a wide-variety of new sources to reveal how freedpeople in Virginia adapted strategies for pursuing the freedom of their souls to worship as they saw fit—and to participate in society completely in the evolving landscape of emancipation.

Nicole Myers Turner is assistant professor of religious studies at Yale University. She is the author of Soul Liberty: The Evolution of Black Religious Politics in Postemancipation 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 9, 2020, Lindsay M. Chervinsky delivered the banner lecture, “The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution”

On November 26, 1791, after waiting two and a half years into his presidency, George Washington convened his department secretaries―Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Henry Knox, and Edmund Randolph―for the first cabinet meeting. In a virtual Banner Lecture on July 9, 2020, historian Lindsay M. Chervinsky reveals the far-reaching consequences of Washington’s decision. The tensions in the cabinet between Hamilton and Jefferson heightened partisanship and contributed to the development of the first party system. And as Washington faced an increasingly recalcitrant congress, he came to treat the cabinet as a private advisory body to summon as needed, greatly expanding the role of the president and the executive branch.

Lindsay M. Chervinsky is a Scholar-in-Residence at the Institute for Thomas Paine Studies and a Senior Fellow at the International Center for Jefferson Studies. She is the author of The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution.

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 4, 2020, Dr. Christian Keller delivered the banner lecture, “Freedom and Unfreedom in the Great Dismal Swamp”

In his book, City of Refuge: Slavery and Petit Marronage in the Great Dismal Swamp, 1763–1856," Nevius examines petit marronage, an informal slave’s economy, and the construction of internal improvements in the Great Dismal Swamp of Virginia and North Carolina. The vast wetland was tough terrain that most white Virginians and North Carolinians considered uninhabitable. Perceived desolation notwithstanding, black slaves fled into the swamp’s remote sectors and engaged in petit marronage, a type of escape and fugitivity prevalent throughout the Atlantic world. An alternative to the dangers of flight by way of the Underground Railroad, maroon communities often neighbored slave-labor camps, the latter located on the swamp’s periphery and operated by the Dismal Swamp Land Company and other companies that employed slave labor to facilitate the extraction of the Dismal’s natural resources. Often with the tacit acceptance of white company agents, company slaves engaged in various exchanges of goods and provisions with maroons―networks that padded company accounts even as they helped to sustain maroon colonies and communities.

In his examination of life, commerce, and social activity in the Great Dismal Swamp, Nevius engages the historiographies of slave resistance and abolitionism in the early American republic. City of Refuge uses a wide variety of primary sources―including runaway advertisements; planters’ and merchants’ records, inventories, letterbooks, and correspondence; abolitionist pamphlets and broadsides; county free black registries; and the records and inventories of private companies―to examine how American maroons, enslaved canal laborers, white company agents, and commission merchants shaped, and were shaped by, race and slavery in an important region in the history of the late Atlantic world.

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 Apr 22, 2020, Historian John Long examined the trial of Charles Watkins for the murder of his wife, which was marked by threats of lynching, a fugitive manhunt, a disappearing witness, mistaken identities, claims of insanity, and a secret letter.

A drama played out in the mountains of southwestern Virginia in 1891 that attracted nationwide attention and held the citizens of the Roanoke Valley spellbound. It was a story of violence, bigamy, race and a quest for justice. In its day, the story was as closely followed as a modern televised murder trial. Despite the rapt attention of the public then, it has entirely faded from the history books--until now. John Long resurrects the truth of who killed Susan Watkins.

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

In grocery store aisles and kitchens across the country, smiling images of “Aunt Jemima” and other historical and fictional black cooks can be found on various food products and in advertising. Although these images are sanitized and romanticized in American popular culture, they represent the untold stories of enslaved men and women who had a significant impact on the nation's culinary and hospitality traditions even as they were forced to prepare food for their oppressors.

On February 27, 2020, Kelley Fanto Deetz delievered a Banner Lecture that drew upon archaeological evidence, cookbooks, plantation records, and folklore to present a nuanced study of the lives of enslaved plantation cooks from colonial times through emancipation and beyond. She reveals how these men and women were literally “bound to the fire” as they lived and worked in the sweltering and often fetid conditions of plantation house kitchens. These highly skilled cooks drew upon skills and ingredients brought with them from their African homelands to create complex, labor-intensive dishes such as oyster stew, gumbo, jambaya, and fried fish. Deetz restores these forgotten figures to their rightful place in American and Southern history.

Dr. Kelley Fanto Deetz is the Director of Programming, Education, and Visitor Engagement at Stratford Hall and teaches part-time at the University of Virginia. She works as a historical consultant for several museum sites throughout the Mid-Atlantic, and has partnered with National Geographic to work on projects related to Nat Turner. Her work is highlighted in National Geographic’s documentary film, "Rise Up: The Legacy of Nat Turner." She is the author of the critically acclaimed book, Bound to the Fire: How Virginia’s Enslaved Cooks Helped Invent American Cuisine.

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