In response to recent events in VFH’s home town of Charlottesville, including rallies by the KKK, white nationalists, and alt-right groups, we have collected the following resources from our programs that explore issues of race, immigration, and how we memorialize history.
Helping people understand one another by exploring our shared humanity is central to our mission at VFH. As members of the Charlottesville and University of Virginia community, we stand behind UVA President Teresa Sullivan’s affirmation of our shared values of diversity, inclusion, and mutual respect.
With Good Reason and BackStory
Monument Avenue
Historian Maurie McInnis and Brenda Stevenson, and journalist Michael Paul Williams weigh in on the history and controversy of the Confederate monuments along Richmond, Virginia’s Monument Avenue.
A Foe Without Hate.
Brian Balogh and historian Gary Gallagher discuss some of the stories told about Confederate General Robert E. Lee — and how Lee came to be venerated by many Americans in both the North and the South after the Civil War. More »
A Cuban in Mayberry
In 1960, eleven-year-old Gustavo Pérez-Firmat came to the States as a refugee from Cuba. Pérez-Firmat explores what it was like to be a Cuban refugee growing up in a small American town much like the fictional “Mayberry” from The Andy Griffith Show. More »
Between a Rock and a Hard Place
BackStory producers Eric Mennel and Nell Boeschenstein visit Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia to tell the story of a monument in honor of Heyward Shepherd, a free black and the first man killed during John Brown’s 1859 raid. More »
Confederate States of Mind
WBEZ Chicago’s Logan Jaffe talks with three Americans for whom the Confederate flag represents three very different things. More »
Julian Bond on Race in America
Julian Bond, American social activist and leader in the Civil Rights Movement, whose grandfather was born into slavery, candidly talked about race with With Good Reason host Sarah McConnell in this interview in 2004. More »
Flags of Our Forefathers
American Civil War Museum historian John Coski walks Ed Ayers through the evolution of the Confederate flag’s design—from the original “Stars and Bars” to the “rebel flag” we know today. More »
A Nation of Nations
Tom Gjelten, NPR correspondent and author of the new book, A Nation of Nations: A Great American Immigration Story, discussing the rise in U.S. immigration and what it will mean when the United States is no longer majority white. More »
Encyclopedia Virginia
History United
At a June community event hosted by VFH’s History United program, historian Ed Ayers explored the roots of segregation. Held at historic High Street Baptist Church in Danville, Ayers discussed Virginia’s history of segregation, disfranchisement, and resistance from emancipation into the early 20th century.
