Dear VA-Hist members:



I would like to invite you to the next in the Library's series of noon book
talks.  On Friday, March 21, 2003, Suzanne Lebsock will speak on her book A
Murder in Virginia: Southern Justice on Trial published by W.W. Norton &
Company.  Dr. Lebsock is currently a professor of history at the University
of Washington at Seattle but will be returning to Rutgers University this
fall.  She won the Bancroft Prize for her first book, The Free Women of
Petersburg, and received the prestigious MacArthur Foundation fellowship in
1992.  A Murder in Virginia will be available in the Library Shop and a book
signing in the lobby will follow the lecture.



Dr. Lebsock's work traces a sensational 1895 murder case in Lunenburg
County, Virginia. Lucy Pollard, a white woman, is murdered in her farmyard,
and suspicion soon falls on a young black sawmill hand, who implicates three
women, accusing them of plotting the murder and wielding the ax. The book
vividly recounts courtroom scenes, threats of lynching, and campaigns by
newspaper editors, militia leaders, and citizens to defend and eventually
overturn the convictions of all three women: a devout (and pregnant) mother
of nine; another hard-working mother (also of nine); and her plucky,
quick-tempered daughter. A murder mystery based on solid historical
sleuthing, the book also makes a case for the probable identity of the real
killer.  Lebsock takes us deep into this contentious, often surprising
world, where blacks struggle to hold on to their post-Civil War gains.  A
sensation in its own time, this case offers the modern reader a riveting
encounter with a South in the throes of change.



Much of Dr. Lebsock's research for A Murder in Virginia was based in records
housed at the Library of Virginia, especially court documents and
newspapers, so it is especially appropriate that the Library is hosting one
of her first lectures on this new work.


Gregg Kimball


Gregg D. Kimball
Director of Publications
  and Educational Services
Library of Virginia
804/692-3722
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