Mr. Vejnar and All:

    I am sure that there are scholarly journals which are prejudiced against 
certain subject but I do not think that the VMHB falls into that category. 
Having published an article there, reviewed for the journal, and also having 
been a blind reviewer of manuscripts;  I can attest to the catholicity of 
its tastes.
    The fact is the fairest journal in the world is still subject to the 
interests of scholars who seek to publish in it.  I work on the Southside. 
I did notice a considerable prejudice against the Southside among Virginians 
I met in Richmond, Williamsburg, etc.
Well, you know "south of the James lies Dixie."  The Southside is small 
towns and tobacco farms.  Many of the counties are still majority black. 
Most of the great estates were and are in the Tidewater.
    Yet, I received nothing but encouragement and sound advice from people 
at the VHS and the LV.  Sure enough, the first piece I produced on the 
Southside, the VMHB published.  My sense was that besides just being kind 
and supportive, the VHS and LV staff recognized that there was a shortage of 
work on late-19th century Southside history.  Now, we have Jeff 
Kerr-Ritchie's Freedpeople of the Tobacco South, Jayne Dailey's Before Jim 
Crow which certainly includes the Southside, Hampton Carey's fine Columbia 
University doctoral dissertation, New Voices in the Old Dominion:  Black 
Politics in the Virginia Southside Region and the City of Richmond, 
1867-1902 (2000), and my humble work, the Southside has begun to get the 
sort of historical coverage it merits.
    Let me ask you, how many scholars do you know who work on southwest 
Virginia?  How many have claimed to have been rejected for publication by 
the VMHB?
    As I remember it, a large portion of the manuscript material from the 
WPA folklore collection for Virginia focuses on Wise County.  I am sure that 
there are other resources, including mss. legal records, etc.  If you came 
up with a rationale besides something like 'one region, one article' as you 
appear to me to have argued here, it might move graduate students and 
established scholars to take an interest in Wise County and its neighbors.
    Such work would have to meet the high standards of the VMHB, but that is 
true for articles about UVA, the Tidewater, and the Civil War.
    By the way, I agree that Virginia's hill country and foothill country 
needs a fuller examination.

with respect,

Harold S. Forsythe
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robert Vejnar" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, March 09, 2007 3:12 PM
Subject: Bias at the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography


I must credit Mr. Levengood with pointing out my oversight.  Yes, the 
article
on Floyd County (vol. 108, #4) does cover Southwest Virginia.  However, I
had to chuckle when he mentioned the issue devoted to the Kanawha salt
industry (vol. 107, #4).  Sorry, even if the region had not left Virginia in 
1863
to form the state of West Virginia, Kanawha would be considered western
Virginia, not southwestern Virginia.

I examined every issue of the VMHB from 1984 to the latest issue.  In those
22 years - now going on 23 - the VMHB has published 332 articles (in order 
to
be fair I omitted from consideration vol. 114, #1, which is devoted solely 
to
the 175th anniversary of the Virginia Historical Society), of which only 
THREE
deal exclusively with Southwest Virginia:  the one mentioned above, another
in vol. 110 #1, and one published in 1997, vol. 105, #2.  I find it 
difficult to
believe that in 22 years the editors of the VMHB have found room for only 3
articles on southwestern Virginia.

However, they have found plenty of room in those 22 years for colonial era
history - that is, colonial era history focusing on Virginia east of the 
Blue
Ridge.  By my count the VMHB has published 94 articles on Eastern colonial
Virgina history (including a couple dealing with the "backcountry", although
those "backcountry" articles do not deal at all with Southwest Virginia), or
approximately 28% of all articles published.  In that same time period they
have published 37 articles related to the Civil War, or approximately 11%, 
and
14 articles (approximatley 4%) focusing on the city of Richmond

And as far as UVA is concerned, the editors somehow found room in the past
22 years for 6 submissions on Mr. Jefferson's University:  vol. 92, #3; vol. 
100,
#3; vol. 103, #3; vol. 105, #1; vol. 110, #4; and vol. 115, #1.  And in that
same time period they also managed to find room for 15 articles on Mr.
Jefferson himself.  One has to wonder what else one could possibly need to
know about our 3rd president given the countless monographs that have
already been devoted to him?  By the way, when one combines the number of
articles devoted to UVA and the number devoted to Mr. Jefferson, the total
comes to 21 articles in 22 years - roughly one article per year - or
approximately 6%.

No wonder, then, when the VMHB rejected my colleague's article for
publication they said the following:  "It [the rejected article] is well
researched and closely argued, but the topic is far too narrow to fit the 
scope
of essay we're looking for.  We receive a far larger number of manuscripts
than we can publish in our limited pages."  Well of course they do not have
room for anything on Southwest Virginia, especially when approximately 49%
of the pages of the VMHB have to be filled with telling us more about 
Eastern
colonial Virginia, the Civil War, Thomas Jefferson and the University of 
Virginia,
and the city of Richmond!

The Aristotelian Method teaches students to look at the facts and then draw
conclusions.  By examining the facts above, I think the conclusion is 
clear -
there is a bias AGAINST publishing articles in the VMHB dealing with 
Southwest
Virginia history.  Perhaps those of us in Southwest Virginia who belong to 
the
Virginia Historical Society (which publishes the VMHB) should cease
membership in the VHS.  If they do not care about the region, why support
them financially?