With Good Reason

Passed at the height of the eugenics movement, the Racial Integrity Act proclaimed the existence of only two racial categories in Virginia—”colored” and white.  The law stripped Native Americans, and members of other groups with dark skin, of their land, voting rights, and legal identity.  David Smith (Longwood University) and anthropologist Helen Rountree (Old Dominion [...]

New research examines how postwar German history textbooks addressed the traumatic events of the Second World War.  Brian Puaca (Christopher Newport University) explores how the textbooks first depicted Germans as victims and how these books gradually incorporated a frank and honest account of National Socialism and Nazi atrocities. He challenges those who have argued that [...]

James Farmer was the leader of the 1961 Freedom Rides that desegregated transportation in the South. His skilled oratory was shaped in part as a member of the legendary 1935 debate team portrayed in Denzel Washington’s 2007 feature film, The Great Debaters. Timothy O’Donnell (University of Mary Washington) is leading an effort to help historically [...]

Women journalists who covered the Vietnam War are often not given their proper due when the history of the conflict is told.  Joyce Hoffman (Old Dominion University) is the author of On Their Own:  Women Journalists in Vietnam. She shares stories of women who won esteemed prizes for their reporting and several who broke new [...]

Many historians say the United States government of the nineteenth century did little to improve the lives of its citizens. But Brian Balogh (University of Virginia) argues the federal government was quite active even before the era of big government, and laid the groundwork for America to become a superpower in the twentieth century.   Also: Chris [...]

In 1951, young Barbara Johns led a student walkout to protest conditions at the segregated Moton High School in Farmville, VA.  Her actions led to a lawsuit, one of a number that eventually helped strike down the doctrine of “separate but equal.”  Lacy Ward, Jr.  (Longwood University) is Director of the Robert Russa Moton Museum. [...]

When the British planted a cross and their flag on territory previously unclaimed by European nations, they were, Chief Justice John Marshall would later say, exercising a right of discovery that extended back to the 15th-century colonization by Spain and Portugal of non-Christian lands.  Historian Robert J. Miller and Karenne Wood (Virginia Foundation for the [...]

Despite what many people believe, fall leaf color in Virginia is remarkably consistent every year. Dendrologist John Seiler (Virginia Tech) has been studying fall leaf color for decades. Also: biologist Dan Cristol (William & Mary) says mercury pollution in waterways is not only bad for fish-eating birds, but for songbirds as well, who are absorbing [...]

Richmond’s population is growing again – up two percent in recent years. But that’s still down twenty percent from the city’s all time high in 1970.  Producer Lydia Wilson looks at what led so many Richmonders to flee to the suburbs: [Audio clip: view full post to listen]

This video was embedded using the YouTuber plugin by Roy Tanck. Adobe Flash Player is required to view the video.Preview for a VA PBS documentary this Fall on Massive Resistance