VMHC Lectures

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 cas...

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...

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 NAAC...

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...

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 Pun...

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...

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...

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 wor...

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...

On May 9, 2019, Gregory D. Smithers delivered the Banner Lecture, “Native Southerners: The Indigenous People Who Made and Remade the South.” Long before the indigenous people of southeastern North America encountered Europeans and Africans, they established communities with clear social and political hierarchies and rich cultural traditions. Historian Gregory D. Smithers brings the world of Native...

On April 17, 2019, Douglas Brinkley delivered the 2019 Stuart G. Christian, Jr. Lecture, “American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race.” On May 25, 1961, John F. Kennedy made an astonishing announcement: his goal of putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade. In American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race, Douglas Brinkley returns to the 1960s to recreate one...

On April 25, 2019, Aaron Sheehan-Dean delivered the Banner Lecture,“The Calculus of Violence: How Americans Fought the Civil War.” At least three-quarters of a million lives were lost during the American Civil War. Given its seemingly in­discriminate mass destruction, this conflict is often thought of as the first “total war.” Aaron Sheehan-Dean's latest books, The Calculus of Violence, demons...

On April 5, 2019, Heath Hardage Lee delivered the Banner Lecture, “The League of Wives: The Untold Story of the Women Who Took on the U.S. Government to Bring Their Husbands Home from Vietnam.” On February 12, 1973, one hundred and fifteen men who, just six years earlier, had been high flying Navy and Air Force pilots, shuffled, limped, or were carried off a huge military transport plane at Clark...

On March 26, 2019, Gregory May delivered a Banner Lecture entitled “Jefferson’s Treasure: How Albert Gallatin Saved the New Nation from Debt.” The fight over how to pay for government has always been at the heart of American politics. Thomas Jefferson’s champion in that fight was Albert Gallatin. And in the great struggle against Alexander Hamilton’s financial policies, Gallatin won. Gregory May’s...

On March 14, 2019, Nancy E. Sheppard delivered the Banner Lecture, “Hampton Roads Murder and Mayhem: The Darker Side of the Tidewater.” Join two-time, award-nominated author and historian, Nancy Sheppard, as she discusses some of the darker tales from southeastern Virginia. Dive into true stories of: survival cannibalism at Jamestowne the bravery of Grace Sherwood, known as “The Witch of Pungo” st...

The formation of the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia is a national story with strong ties to Virginia. Fueled by their shared frustration about the United States government’s silence regarding prisoners of war held by the North Vietnamese, Phyllis Galanti, Louise Mulligan, and Jane Denton—all wives of American POWs living in Virginia—began organizing...

On February 28, 2019, Elizabeth L. O’Leary delivered the Banner Lecture, “Across Time: Robinson House, Its Land and People.” What is that building? Just a short stroll from the Virginia Museum of History & Culture stands a tall antebellum structure with a soaring pyramidal belvedere. Robinson House, built about 1828 and expanded in the nineteenth century (and again just last year), is schedule...

On February 21, 2019, Peter S. Carmichael delivered the Banner Lecture, “Tracking Down a Confederate Deserter after Gettysburg.” On August 20, 1863, thirteen veteran soldiers from the 3rd North Carolina Infantry decided that they'd had enough of war. That evening, in the blackness of night, they picked up their rifles, slung on their cartridge belts, and escaped into the woods. From that point...

Over the past decade, Richmond has seen an explosion of public artwork. Artist, muralist, and writer Mickael Broth has documented this phenomenon in his new book, Murals of Richmond. In this special edition banner lecture, held on January 10, 2019, Broth moderates a lively panel discussion about the transformative power of public art with Christina Wing Chow, Hamilton Glass, Andre Shank, and Ed Tr...

Few figures from the American past are better known than the young Powhatan woman who has come down to us as “Pocahontas.” Her fame began in her own lifetime and has endured for more than 400 years. Pocahontas: Her Life, Legend, and Legacy was a half-day symposium held at the Virginia Museum of History & Culture on November 14, 2018 with the intention of telling the story of Pocahontas from th...

Few figures from the American past are better known than the young Powhatan woman who has come down to us as “Pocahontas.” Her fame began in her own lifetime and has endured for more than 400 years. Pocahontas: Her Life, Legend, and Legacy was a half-day symposium held at the Virginia Museum of History & Culture on November 14, 2018 with the intention of telling the story of Pocahontas from th...

Few figures from the American past are better known than the young Powhatan woman who has come down to us as “Pocahontas.” Her fame began in her own lifetime and has endured for more than 400 years. Pocahontas: Her Life, Legend, and Legacy was a half-day symposium held at the Virginia Museum of History & Culture on November 14, 2018 with the intention of telling the story of Pocahontas from th...

On October 30, 2018, James M. Scott delivered the banner lecture, “Rampage: MacArthur, Yamashita, and the Battle of Manila.” General Douglas MacArthur, driven from the Philippines under the cover of darkness at the beginning of World War II, famously vowed to return. This is the untold story of his homecoming. The twenty-nine-day battle to retake Manila resulted in the catastrophic destruction of...

On October 17, 2018, James Horn delivered the J. Harvie Wilkinson, Jr. Lecture, “1619: Jamestown and the Forging of American Democracy.” Along the banks of the James River, Virginia, during an oppressively hot spell in the middle of summer 1619, two events occurred within a month of each other that would profoundly shape the course of history. In the newly built church at Jamestown, the General As...

As a statesman, diplomat, secretary of state, and chief justice, no one in the founding generation had a more enduring impact on our country’s government and judicial system than John Marshall, and no one did more to preserve the delicate unity of the fledgling union. From 1776 to his death in 1835, Marshall was at the center of every key event in the nation’s history both at home and abroad.  Rai...