VMHC Lectures

On march 16, 2012, Helen Rountree delivered the banner lecture "Before It Was Virginia: Setting the Stage" When English settlers arrived here 400 years ago, they encountered the first Virginians, the most famous of whom are the subjects of Helen C. Rountree's book, Pocahontas, Powhatan, and Opechancanough: Three Indian Lives Changed by Jamestown. This presentation was the keynote addre...

On march 28, 2012, Jeremy Black delivered the banner lecture "Fighting for America: The Struggle for Mastery in North America, 1519-1871" In his latest book, prize-winning author Jeremy Black traces the competition for control of North America from the landing in 1519 of Spanish troops in what became Mexico to 1871 when, with the Treaty of Washington, Britain accepted American mastery in N...

On April 5, 2012, Mitchell Zuckoff delivered the 2012 Stuart G. Christian, Jr., Lecture entitled Lost in Shangri-La: A Story of Survival and Rescue during World War II. The Stuart G. Christian, Jr., Lecture was named in honor of the former president of the VHS (1989–91). Near the end of World War II, a plane carrying twenty-four members of the United States military, including nine Women’s Army Co...

On April 12, 2012, Jill Titus delivered a lecture entitled Brown's Battleground in Prince Edward County, Virginia. When the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, Prince Edward County abolished its public school system rather than integrate. In her new book, Brown's Battleground: Students, Segregationists, and the Struggle for Justice in Prince...

On January 23, 2014, Sheldon Bart delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Race to the Top of the World: Richard Byrd and the First Flight to the North Pole." In the age of adventure, when dirigibles coasted through the air and vast swaths of the earth remained untouched and unseen by man, one pack of relentless explorers competed in the race of a lifetime: to be the first aviator to fly over...

Most southern-born army officers resigned their commissions to join the Confederacy in 1861. But a substantial minority remained loyal to the national government, including George H. Thomas, the "Rock of Chickamauga," one of the most successful Union generals of the Civil War. On March 6, 2008, Christopher Einolf spoke on his biography of the career soldier from Southampton County. Dr. Ein...

On February 22, 2007, Dr. DeLaney delivered this Banner Lecture at the VHS. In 1954 the Supreme Court held in Brown v. Board of Education that segregation by race in public schools was unconstitutional. In subsequent years, the course of integration followed a slow and varied path. The unfolding of that experience in the schools of western Virginia, particularly as related through oral history int...

On August 20, 2009, Lt. Gen. G. R. (Ron) Christmas, USMC (Ret.) delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "The Battle of Hué City, South Vietnam, 1968." The year 1968 marked a crucial turning point in the Vietnam War. During Tet, the lunar New Year holiday, the North Vietnamese and their Viet Cong allies staged attacks across South Vietnam, none more dramatic than the assault on Hué, the old imp...

On June 11, 2009, Phyllis and Paul Galanti delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "For Better or For Worse: The Journey of a POW and His Wife." In June 1966, Lt. Cmdr. Paul Galanti was shot down over Vietnam and endured nearly seven years of captivity. His wife Phyllis played a leading role in the efforts of the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia t...

On April 1, 2010, Eugene P. Trani delivered a Banner Lecture on his book "Distorted Mirrors: Americans and Their Relations with Russia and China in the Twentieth Century." During the last century, United States relations with Russia and China went through many tumultuous changes. In a new appraisal, Eugene Trani shows where American images of Russia and China originated, how they evolved,...

On December 3, 2009, George W. Grayson delivered a Banner Lecture titled "The Struggle with Drugs and Thugs in U.S.-Mexican Relations: Mexico: Narco-Violence and a Failed State?" about his book "Mexico: Narco-Violence and a Failed State?". The armed conflict between Mexico's rival drug cartels and the central government is headline news in the United States. George W. Grayson p...

On July 23, 2009, Ray McAllister delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Hatteras Island: Keeper of the Outer Banks." The Outer Banks have enticed Virginians with the lure of sun, sky, and sea for generations. Despite this idyllic appeal, these once-isolated barrier islands have also witnessed a turbulent past. Pirates, hurricanes, shipwrecks, and U-boats all make their appearance in the vari...

On September 4, 2008, Robert E. Wright delivered a Banner Lecture on his book, "Virginia: Catalyst of Commerce for Four Centuries." The United States was born in debt. Was this obligation a vital tool for forging national unity, or a monstrous burden? In "One Nation Under Debt: Hamilton, Jefferson, and the History of What We Owe," Robert E. Wright follows our nation's debt from...

In his compelling new biography, the first full-length life of Booker T. Washington in a generation, Robert J. Norrell recreates the broad context in which the African American leader worked to overcome past exploitation and present discrimination. Although Washington has often been disparaged since the 1960s, "Up from History" details the positive power of his vision to invoke hope and op...

On September 17, 2009, Edward G. Lengel delivered a lecture on his book Meuse-Argonne, 1918: The Battle That Ended World War I. After four years of stalemate on the Western Front, a final Allied push broke the German army in autumn 1918. The Meuse-Argonne Offensive represented the war's largest commitment of American troops to battle and helped pave the way to German capitulation in November....

On Thursday, May 6, 2010, the VHS held its annual Stuart G. Christian, Jr., Lecture in the Robins Family Forum. Elizabeth and Michael Norman discussed their book Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath, the gripping story of the 1942 battle for the Philippines, the surrender of 76,000 Americans and Filipinos to the Japanese, and the infamous Bataan death march....

On July 24, 2008, Paul A. Levengood delivered the banner lecture "From Cotton Fields to Skyscrapers: The Transformation of the South in the Twentieth Century" At the dawn of the twentieth century, the South was by all measurements the poorest, most segregated region in the United States. One hundred years later, it was one of the fastest-growing parts of the nation, attracting population a...

On March 25, 2010, Melvin Urofsky delivered a lecture on his book Louis Brandeis: An American Legal Giant. Louis Brandeis was one of the most important and distinguished justices to sit on the United States Supreme Court. In his latest book, Melvin Urofsky presents not only Brandeis the reformer, lawyer, and jurist, but also Brandeis the man, in all of his complexity, passion, and wit. Drawing on...

On May 24, 2007, Ms. Pryor delivered this lecture on her book, Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through his Private Letters Since his death, researchers have lamented that Robert E. Lee never wrote a memoir. But, as author Elizabeth Brown Pryor revealed during her Banner Lecture at the VHS, this collection contains numerous letters and notes in the hand of Robert E. Lee reflecting on h...

On November 1, 2007, William M. S. Rasmussen delivered a lecture in conjunction with exhibition Lee and Grant. The two great opposing military commanders of the Civil War, Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant, towered over their contemporaries. In a major exhibition and book created in the 200th anniversary year of Lee's birth, the VHS explored the parallel lives of these two American heroes. In...

In his 1866 poem, "Lee in the Capitol," Herman Melville portrays a dignified Robert E. Lee advocating reconciliation before the Congressional committee on Reconstruction. One of the poet's most powerful references is his association of Lee with George Washington. On February 28, 2008, Robert Tilton's lecture examined Melville's interpretation of Lee and his role in American his...

On March 21, 2008, Joseph Glatthaar delivered the banner lecture "General Lee's Army: From Victory to Collapse" In this lecture, based on his new book General Lee's Army, Dr. Glatthaar used the story of Robert E. Lee's army as a powerful lens for viewing the entire Civil War, from the early springtime of southern hopes to final crushing defeat, from the homefront to the heart o...

On May 22, 2008, Robert K. Krick delivered the banner lecture "Lee and the Historians in the Age of the Anti-Hero" According to some recent historians, Gen. Robert E. Lee was not a hero to southerners during the Civil War but only afterward. Robert K. Krick argues to the contrary that he was idolized as a great leader in the midst of the conflict, not just later when the defeated South gro...

On June 12, 2008, Keith Gibson delivered the banner lecture "Moses Ezekiel: Civil War Soldier, Renowned Sculptor" Few sculptors of the nineteenth century were as well known during their lifetimes as Moses Ezekiel, though he is little-known today. The first Jewish cadet at VMI, he fought in the battle of New Market in 1864. Encouraged by Robert E. Lee to pursue his artistic calling, Ezekiel...

On November 12, 2009, Anna Gibson Holloway delivered the banner lecture "So Ends This Day: An Illustrated Update on the Life and Times of the Monitor, from 1861 to yesterday" Although the Union ironclad Monitor may have ended her working career in a gale off Cape Hatteras in December 1862, her story does not end there. Discovered in 1973, established as a National Marine Sanctuary in 1975,...