Dear VA-HIST members:

I would like to invite you to the next in the Library's noon book talks.  On
Wednesday, January 22, 2003, Dianne Swann-Wright will speak on her book A
Way out of No Way: Claiming Family and Freedom in the New South published by
the University of Virginia Press.  Dr. Swann-Wright is Director of African
American and Special Programs and Project Historian for the Getting Word
oral history program at Monticello.

An African American folk saying declares, "Our God can make a way out of no
way. . . . He can do anything but fail." When Dianne Swann-Wright set out to
capture and relate the history of her ancestors-African Americans in central
Virginia after the Civil War-she had to find that way, just as her people
had done in creating a new life after emancipation.  Looking at relations
between plantation owners and their slaves and the succeeding generations of
both, A Way out of No Way explores what it meant for the master-slave
relation to change to one of employer and employee and how patronage, work
relationships, and land acquisition evolved as the people of Piedmont
Virginia entered the twentieth century.

Dr. Swann-Wright's book will be available in the Library Shop and a book
signing in the lobby will follow the lecture.

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