Thursday, January 25, 2007
Commemorating Jamestown: A Clash of Race and Memory
Time: 5:30 PM
Place: Library of Virginia, Lecture Hall

W. Fitzhugh Brundage, William B. Umstead Professor of History and director
of Graduate Studies at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will
discuss white and black historical memory in the South since the Civil
War. The history of the commemoration of the founding of Jamestown,
Virginia, reveals much about the evolution of ideas about Virginia’s past
and its meaning for black and white Americans. Few historic sites had a
more paradoxical meaning; Jamestown was venerated by many whites as the
birthplace of Anglo-Saxon civilization and democracy while simultaneously
remembered by blacks as the cradle of American slavery. Inevitably, then,
when Virginians and Americans commemorated the founding of Jamestown, they
had to struggle with the vexing question of race and American identity.
Brundage's talk will describe the ways in which black and white Americans
grappled with the dilemma of race in a century and a half of Jamestown
commemorations, concluding with some observations about the meaning of
Jamestown for contemporary Americans.

Please join us at the Library of Virginia, located at 800 East Broad
Street in Richmond, VA for this special evening event.

Best,

Katie Gillespie
Education Coordinator
(804) 371-2126

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