FALL 2019 · 2020-02-18 · brought psychologist and author Beverly Tatum to the Norfolk region to speak about the impact of privilege and implicit bias on the region. ... Ingramettes

3 Women Front and Center 9 Telling the Whole Story17 The Saving Grace of Spring Rolls 33 From Conversation to Collective Action

Earlier this year we launched a strategic plan that focuses our work on questions that are important and relevant to Virginians right now. It's organized around three themes: amplifying Virginia’s stories; investigating cultures in transition; and, exploring issues related to equity and democracy. In this edition of Views, you'll read about how these themes connect our programs, guide our partnerships, and help us make the humanities part of the daily life of all Virginians.

Since our founding in 1974, we have focused on Virginia's stories. Stories bring meaning to our lives, build our capacity for empathy, and connect us to one another. As we seek to amplify Virginia's stories, we will also high-light and celebrate experiences traditionally left out of mainstream narratives. In the following pages, you’ll find a piece about how our Encyclopedia Virginia helped third-grade teachers Alexa Weeks and Leatrice Woods and their students at Smithland Elementary School create virtual tours of a historically Black neighborhood in Harrisonburg. In another story, we take you on tour with Richmond’s Legendary Ingramettes as they spread the rich traditions of American gospel music across Serbia and Bulgaria. And you'll see how dozens of grants we gave this year are empowering Virginia’s communities to tell their own stories.

While our work uplifts and celebrates Virginia’s history and culture, it also explores difficult parts of our past and acknowledges that Virginians today are confronting economic, environmental, and technological change. When we look at cultures in transition, we try to understand how these major shifts in our world affect us and our future. One such story explores our Festival of the Book’s partnership with the Southern Environmental Law Center to honor writing that brings attention to environmental issues. In another story, a Fellow shares what it was like to grow up as a child of two cultures and how food can keep a family connected to their roots.

In all times, we must consider how our nation can strive to become a more perfect union and move toward the noble, but imperfectly expressed ideal that “all men are created equal.” Our programs exploring equity and democracy encourage civic dialogue, facilitate the exchange of experiences and perspectives,

COVERStudents at Charlottesville High School made letterpress

posters featuring proverbs and sayings important to them

when Detroit-based printmaker Amos Paul Kennedy Jr.

visited area art classes as part of his Frank Riccio artist

residency. To learn more, see “Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. –

Frank Riccio Artist-in-Residence” inside.

Photo by Pat Jarrett, Virginia Humanities

and investigate ways that American democracy both advances and inhibits the equality of all people. One story highlights the work of women who fought for suffrage and details how the Rosel Schewel Fund will support programming by and about women. Another piece focuses on our partnership with the Hampton Roads Community Foundation that brought psychologist and author Beverly Tatum to the Norfolk region to speak about the impact of privilege and implicit bias on the region. And we interrogate what it means for our Center for the Book to be housed in a building that was created to serve Charlottesville’s Black students during segregation.

By necessity, we are a diversely funded organization. This year we celebrate the fact that the Virginia General Assembly has granted an additional $300,000 per year of the biennium to our grants program, returning our grants budget to pre-recession levels. Out of these funds, $100,000 is specifically for grant-making and developing resources in south and southwest Virginia. We’re able to offer expansive programs and do all that we do across this Commonwealth because of state and federal investments, corporate and foundation gifts, and your belief in the power of stories to transform lives and build a vibrant future for our state. In the pages that follow, I hope you will see how far your support reaches.

With gratitude,

Matthew Gibson Executive Director

ABOVE - Matthew Gibson

Photo by Pat Jarrett, Virginia Humanities

9 Telling theWhole StoryVirginia Humanities helps reveal the lives of the enslaved and widen the scope of narratives presented at plantations statewide.

Women Front and CenterVirginia Humanities announces a new five-year initiative marking the centennial of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.

Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. – Frank Riccio Artist-in-Residence

The Saving Grace of Spring Rolls

Grants23

Annual Report35

Teaching Local History31

Content and Context: The Meaning of Book Arts

13Call andResponseTag along with The Legendary Ingramettes and Sherman Holmes as they spread the traditions of gospel and blues music across Serbia and Bulgaria.

17 The Saving Grace of Spring RollsKim O'Connell shares the ways food helped her family navigate the immigrant experience and maintain their cultural roots.

25 Content and Context: The Meaning of Book Arts

9 Telling the Whole Story

8 Festival Partnership Raises Awareness of Environmental Writing

Women Front and Center

13 Call and Response

Lyall Harris delves into what it means to be a book artist.

From Conversation to Collective Action

Women Front and

CenterBy Donna M. Lucey

the programming will focus on the nuances of the woman suffrage movement, with its internal divisions and political jockeying, as well as the suffragists themselves, many of whom performed extraordinary acts of physical courage.

Virginia played a central role in some of the more dramatic moments of the suffrage movement. In 1917, women peacefully protesting in front of the White House were arrested and jailed in the Occoquan Workhouse in Lorton, Virginia. There, some of the suffragists were beaten and left unconscious. The women began a hunger strike to demand recognition as political prisoners. Prison officials, unmoved by the women’s pleas, force-fed them. A number of the women brutalized in Occoquan—among them several Virginians—traveled across the country in 1919 on a speaking tour dubbed the “Prison Special." The former prisoners shared their horrific experiences and added a dramatic touch by wearing their prison uniforms.

ne needn’t look into a crystal ball to predict that 2020 will be a political roller coaster: a contentious presidential election will play out alongside celebrations

honoring the centennial of women achieving the right to vote. August 20, 2020, will mark 100 years since the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, and November 2, 2020, will commemorate the anniversary of the day women across the country went to the national polls for the first time. (A number of states—mainly those in the West—had already granted full suffrage to women before the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.)

A new, five-year initiative at Virginia Humanities exploring issues of particular interest to women will also begin in 2020. This ambitious undertaking is made possible by a recently announced endowed fund honoring Rosel Schewel, Virginia Humanities’ longest-serving board member, who passed away on September 28, 2017. The initiative will begin by examining the theme of “Women and Political Engagement” in a series of public events in the weeks before the presidential election. Part of

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RIGHT These woman suffrage buttons, ribbons, and name badges date from 1909 to 1922 and are part of the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia collection at the Library of Virginia. Ida Mae Thompson, longtime secretary of the league office in Richmond, collected memorabilia and papers dealing with the organization and donated them to the library in 1942.Photo courtesy of Library of Virginia

PREVIOUS PAGE A political poster produced by the Virginia League of Women Voters urges women to cast their ballots in the upcoming national election in 1920. Women gained the right to vote that year with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.Image courtesy of Library of Virginia

Suffragists fought an uphill battle in the Common-wealth against both men and women who believed suffrage for all would destroy traditional values. In 1912, two Virginia women went toe-to-toe debat-ing the suffrage question in the newspapers. Adèle Clark took up her pen to forcefully refute Molly Elliot Seawell, a popular and prolific writer who believed “woman suffrage to be an unmixed evil.” Seawell’s views were shared by the vast majority of the men in the state, as well as by the powerful liquor industry, which feared if women won the vote, prohibition would not be far behind.

Complicating the issue even further was the matter of race and the fear of what might happen if Black women voted. In 1916 the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia — an all - white organization— issued a broadside to reassure Virginians that woman suffrage would not “constitute a menace to white supremacy.” In fact, the league claimed it would have the opposite effect, with 191,000 more white women than African American women of voting age in the state. In addition, voters were subject to a literacy test and had to pay a poll tax—both of which were used to disfranchise so-called “undesirable” voters.

The suffragists' decades-long campaign reached a climax on May 21, 1919, when the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Nineteenth Amendment granting women the right to vote, by the required two-thirds majority. On June 4, 1919, the U.S. Senate followed suit. It was then up to the states. Two-thirds of them—thirty-six states in all—had to ratify the amendment before it could be incorporated into the U.S. Constitution. Virginia rejected the amendment on February 12, 1920, one of nine southern states to do so. Tension mounted over the fate of the amendment, but on August 18, 1920, Tennessee—the thirty-sixth state—ratified the Nineteenth Amendment by a single vote. Though the victory had been won and Virginia women could henceforth vote, the Virginia General Assembly continued to express its legal disapproval, refusing to ratify the amendment for another thirty-two years. (Similarly, Virginia has failed to ratify the proposed Equal Rights Amendment, a guarantee of equal rights to all citizens regardless of gender, since it was submitted for consideration in 1973.)

Though Black women had been marginalized from the struggle in Virginia, they came to the fore once women won the vote. Women like Maggie Lena Walker, a prominent Black entrepreneur in Richmond, helped organize voter registration drives. Enraged at seeing women standing in long lines to register, Walker went personally to city hall to demand that more officials be employed to hurry up the process. Led by her and other energetic women, nearly 2,500 African American women in Richmond registered to cast their votes in the 1920 election. (More than 10,000 white women in Richmond also registered.)

As the centennial of the vote approaches, much has changed in Virginia. In this #MeToo era, women are taking an increasingly visible role as political power brokers. The 2017 election for Virginia’s General Assembly transformed the entire look of the halls of power, as more than one-quarter of the legislators are currently women. And the 2019 election may add to that total. Thus, the timing is perfect for Virginia Humanities to take a deep dive into issues from the past and present that are relevant and important to the women of Virginia—a venture made possible by the Rosel Schewel Fund.

Schewel, a graduate of the University of Lynchburg (then Lynchburg College) and a resident of that city, was an educator, philanthropist, and political activist. A fierce advocate for racial justice and women's rights, Schewel's influence was felt across the state over many decades. In the 1950s she succeeded in integrating a new Girl Scout camp over the protests of board members and helped found the Lynchburg League of Women Voters. In the 1970s she was instrumental in creating the Women's Resource Center in Lynchburg, and in the 2010s she was a leader in the establishment of Beacon of Hope, a nonprofit organization that actively encourages and mentors high school students to help them gain access to higher education. Appropriately, the kickoff for the fund named in her honor will take place at the University of Lynchburg in the fall of 2020. The planned public events will include a series of discussions examining the high level of current political activity by women on both sides of the aisle;

The first African American women to vote in Ettrick, Virginia pose for a photograph in 1920. Virginia State University, a historically black public land-grant university, is located in Ettrick. All of these women were on the faculty of the university. Pictured in the first row, left to right, are Mary Branch, Anna Lindsay, Edna Colson, Edwina Wright, Johnella Frazer (Jackson), and Nannie Nichols. In the back row, left to right, are Eva Conner, Evie Carpenter (Spencer), and Odelle Green.

Photo courtesy of Special Collections and University Archives, Johnston Memorial Library, Virginia State University

Learn more about the history of woman suffrage

in Virginia in Encyclopedia Virginia by visiting

EncyclopediaVirginia.org/Woman_Suffrage_in_Virginia.

the unsung achievements of women who fought to get the vote; and the work of local civic activists in Lynchburg’s past and present.

These events will mark the start of a five-year initiative by Virginia Humanities. During that time, woman-led and woman-focused projects will explore topics on an annual thematic basis. After starting with women in the political sphere, other broad topics will include women’s health, women in social movements, the hidden—or undervalued—labor of women, and women’s stories that have yet to be told. This initiative will coincide with a committee-led fundraising effort to grow the Rosel Schewel Fund to $500,000 by 2025.

Virginia Humanities is well positioned to add to the ongoing conversation about the expertise, challenges, triumphs, and diverse experiences of Virginia women; its programs already have a long history of exploring and amplifying these themes. Encyclopedia Virginia’s section on Women’s History contains more than 100 entries that supply rich historical context; the Virginia Festival of the Book has always been a prime showcase for rising young women authors as well as established ones, and

panel discussions often revolve around current issues of particular concern to women; grants and fellowships have been a prime avenue for advancing scholarship on these themes; the African American and Virginia Indian programs have highlighted the contributions of women ignored in traditional histories; the dynamic work of the Virginia Folklife Program has long provided evidence of the importance of women in traditional arts and crafts, from gospel singing to oyster shucking; and the Virginia Humanities radio programs BackStory and With Good Reason have offered engaging platforms for exploring women’s stories. If successful in reaching its fundraising goal, the Rosel Schewel Fund will protect and amplify this important programming for years to come.

More than ten years ago, a unique partnership formed between the Virginia Festival of the Book and the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) to celebrate some of today’s top environmental writers and journalists.

SELC created the Reed Environmental Writing Award in 1994 to increase awareness of the value and vulnerability of the South's natural heritage and to recognize and encourage writers who tell stories about the region's environment. In 2008, SELC and Festival staff began collaborating to honor winners of the annual award at a public event during the Festival each year.

The partnership has continued to grow, providing the opportunity for the Festival to present award-winning authors while also raising awareness of the topics their work addresses, from environmental racism to climate change and its impacts on people and animals alike. Bill Sublette joined the effort in 2014 as the SELC’s coordinator of the Reed Environmental Writing Awards.

“The authors and journalists are shining a light on some of the most pressing issues we face, from the effects of climate change to the impacts of pollution on vulnerable communities,” says Sublette.

In recent years, award winners have included J. Drew Lanham, author of The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature; Deborah Cramer, author of The Narrow Edge: A Tiny Bird, an Ancient Crab & an Epic Journey; and Earl Swift, former Virginia Humanities Fellow and author of Chesapeake Requiem: A Year with the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island.

“There have been so many compelling moments and so many moving stories told during the Reed Award events over the years,” says Sublette. “Our partnership with the Festival has helped engage audiences that we might not have reached otherwise [and] it’s such a privilege to contribute to the energy and excitement that the Festival brings each year. The community just comes to life.”

In addition to SELC, the Virginia Festival of the Book partners with more than 170 community organizations each year. To learn more, visit https://www.vabook.org.

Festival Partnership Raises Awareness of Environmental Writing

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Reed Environmental Writing Award-winner J. Drew Lanham

(right) talks to SELC's Jeff Gleason and his mother, Betz

Gleason, during the 2018 Virginia Festival of the Book.

Photo courtesy of SELC

By Samantha Willis

Virginia Humanities helps reveal the lives of the enslaved and widen the scope of narratives presented at plantations statewide.

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hroughout 2019, Virginia has reflected on the year 1619, when the first enslaved Africans were brought to its shores 400 years ago. This event was at the vanguard

of a brutal, uniquely American system of race-based slavery that kept Black Virginians captive for nearly 250 years. Helping plantations tell their histories more honestly—in a way that confronts false perceptions of "idyllic" Southern plantations, and elevates the lives of the African Americans whose toil sustained their white enslavers—is among the most critical and timely work Virginia Humanities has undertaken.

Virginia Humanities is working to "introduce new models and new ways of engaging the descendant communities at Virginia plantations," says Justin Reid, Virginia Humanities’ director of African American Programs. "We try to promote this knowledge through our programs like Encyclopedia Virginia, and some of our recent projects like

[working with] Google Street View to map slave dwellings across the state." With multi-year support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Encyclopedia Virginia has documented existing historic sites once inhabited by enslaved people - some at former plantations. Google Earth Outreach premiered a short film about the project this June in honor of the historic African American cultural holiday Juneteenth.

Reid also points to Virginia Humanities’ longstanding support of Virginia plantations through grants designed not only to preserve the tangible history in these spaces but also to widen the scope of the narratives they present. Over the years, Virginia Humanities has awarded grants for this kind of work to plantations including James Monroe’s Highland, James Madison’s Montpelier, Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest, and Monticello.

Virginia Humanities has played a particularly important role in helping Monticello reframe its

history, says Niya Bates. Bates has been a public historian of African American life at Monticello for the past three years and heads its Getting Word oral history project. Monticello was the first plantation in the state to conduct such a project, which began in 1993, says Bates, thanks in part to a 1992 grant from Virginia Humanities.

"Getting to know the descendants, hearing their stories and their families’ stories, has been the most impactful part of this process for me," says Bates of Getting Word. More than 200 people, most of them descended from the enslaved families at Monticello, have contributed their time and family knowledge to the project. From its conception, Getting Word’s purpose has been to “locate the descendants of Monticello’s African American families and to record and preserve their stories and histories,” reads the original grant application the organization submitted to Virginia Humanities. These Black stories and histories had been excluded, obscured, or downplayed by traditional areas of research and focus at Monticello and other plantations, says Bates.

“Enslaved people were not bystanders in American history,” Bates says pointedly. Rather, Black people, including those enslaved at Virginia plantations like Monticello, were participants and provocateurs, pushing the nation forward economically, socially and culturally—even as it held them captive.

Virginia Humanities has expanded its work of illuminating the stories of Virginia’s enslaved by partnering with the Citizen’s Advisory Council on Furnishing and Interpreting the Executive Mansion. Located in Richmond, the Executive Mansion was

completed in 1813 to house Virginia's governors and their enslaved workers. “We are in the very early stages of assisting in the reinterpretation of the mansion’s kitchen,” says Reid. The 200-square-foot space is original to the building and was restored in 2017 under the auspices of former Governor Terry McAuliffe and his wife, former First Lady Dorothy McAuliffe. Reid says that in the future, Virginia Humanities hopes to facilitate a 360-degree virtual tour of the kitchen quarter in the manner of its Google Street View mapping project. “I have been advocating for a descendant-led model [of reinterpretation],” adds Reid, a method that will lend dignity and authenticity to the legacy of those enslaved at the mansion.

Bates says descendants of the enslaved must be included and empowered in the telling of their ancestors' stories at plantations.

“The only way to equitably involve the descendant community is to make them part of the leadership with these types of projects,” says Bates. When descendants advised Monticello to rethink how it presented the life of Sally Hemings, an enslaved Black woman who mothered at least six of Jefferson’s children, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation listened, says Bates. A new exhibition about Hemings—which presents a comprehensive, nuanced view of Hemings as a whole human, instead of as an object of mystery and scandal—was produced by Monticello last year, with direct input from Hemings’s descendants.

Bates’s and Virginia Humanities’ hope is that more plantations will include descendants as living experts in the reframing of their narratives and those of their ancestors.

“It’s their history,” says Bates. “We need to help them tell their own stories.”

Learn more about Monticello’s Getting Word

project by visiting Monticello.org/getting-word.

Watch a film by Google Earth Outreach about

Virginia Humanities’ work documenting slave dwellings at

VirginiaHumanities.org/mapping-slave-dwellings.

ABOVE Niya Bates (left) and Justin Reid (right) visited James Monoroe's Highland in December of 2018 as part of a documentary being filmed by Google Earth Outreach.

Photo by Peter Hedlund, Virginia Humanities

PREVIOUS PAGE This early nineteenth-century folk painting by an unknown artist, titled The Plantation, depicts a grand plantation mansion atop a hill.

Image courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art

"Getting to know the descendants, hearing their stories and their families’ stories, has been the most impactful part of this process for me." - Niya Bates

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In a small Catholic church in Pleven, Bulgaria, the congregation sat in silence. The Reverend Almeta Ingram-Miller and her gospel group, The Legendary Ingramettes, were told it might be a tough crowd. But as their energy and command of American gospel reverberated through the pews, exuberance took over. The power of music pushed through the barriers of language, geography, and culture. And by the end, almost everyone in the crowd was out of their seat, dancing and cheering. The audience even joined together to sing a traditional Bulgarian folk song for their guests.

This response would come as no surprise to the folks back home in Richmond, where the Ingramettes are a gospel institution. The group was formed there in the 1960s by “Mama” Maggie Ingram, the Ingramettes' matriarch and leader for more than five decades. A single mother of five, Ingram received what Ingram-Miller—her daughter—describes as a “spiritual calling” to drive her children in their old Chevy from Miami, Florida, to Richmond in 1961—a risky journey through the segregated South. “Mama got a call,” from God, Ingram-Miller explains, “that if she came to Richmond and taught us all to sing we’d one day bless people all over the world.”

Maggie Ingram worked tirelessly toward this goal for more than fifty years until her death in 2015. It’s a dream Ingram-Miller kept pursuing. But the Ingramettes, while nationally recognized, had never left the United States.

By Greg Willett

CALL & RESPONSE

The Legendary Ingramettes and Sherman Holmes performed at the American College of Sofia, Bulgaria on 5/21/19.

Photo by Pat Jarrett, Virginia Humanities13

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That all changed in May of 2019, when the group—which now includes Maggie's granddaughter, Cheryl Maroney Yancey, and Carrie Ann Jackson—embarked on a cultural exchange tour that took them through Bulgaria and Serbia. Organized and produced by the Virginia Folklife Program in collaboration with the American embassies in those countries, and joined by blues musician Sherman Holmes of the Holmes Brothers, the Ingramettes took part in workshops, classroom discussions, and exhibitions, and even performed on late-night television.

They came during a sensitive time. The trip occurred during the twentieth anniversary of when NATO, led by the United States, bombed Serbian military targets in Kosovo over ten weeks in 1999. The airstrikes killed hundreds, and the anniversary had rekindled raw and tragic memories—and anti-American sentiment—in the region.

But in one town after another, when the Ingramettes took the stage, emotion gripped the audience. Concertgoers hugged, cried, danced, and posed for selfies. A sense of humanity and empathy permeated each performance. Kyle Scott, U.S. ambassador to Serbia, said, “Nothing that the U.S. could have brought over could have been better.”

When asked how it felt to be a cultural ambassador for the United States, Maroney Yancey replied, “It feels wonderful because I’ve never been out of my country. So to come to another country and be accepted by individuals who don’t even know me, they made me feel like ‘you’re my sister, you’re my aunt, you’re my cousin’ … it made my heart overwhelmed.”

For Jon Lohman, director of the Virginia Folklife Program, the international exchange highlighted the importance of the arts and humanities in bridging cultural divides. “We do this because we think the world needs it,” he said. “What we need is for people to see each other face to face. The arts are a wonderful lens for us to view one another, and they show the best of ourselves.”

The Legendary Ingramettes have been showing audiences their best selves for six decades—in Virginia, across the United States, and now, in Europe. When the Ingramettes call, the world responds.

Randall Cort instructs children on his drum set after a performance with the Rolling Tones Choir in Bulgaria.

Photo by Pat Jarrett, Virginia Humanities

THE LEGENDARY INGRAMETTESThe Virginia Folklife Program has enjoyed a long friendship with the Legendary Ingramettes, which has included many impactful collaborations. The Ingramettes have graced countless Virginia Folklife Program-produced festival and concert stages including those at the Richmond Folk Festival, Watermelon Park Festival, FloydFest, and many others. The late Maggie Ingram apprenticed her daughter Almeta in the Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Program in 2010, and Maggie’s granddaughter Cheryl participated as a Master Artist in 2014. The Virginia Folklife Program has produced two CDs with the group: Maggie Ingram: Live in Richmond, which won the Independent Music Award for Best Traditional Gospel Album of the Year in 2012, and most recently, Take a Look in the Book, to be released in early 2020.

This story was co-published with UVA Arts and appears in Volume 11 of UVA Arts magazine.

Cheryl Maroney-Yancey embraces an audience member following a performance.

Photo by Pat Jarrett, Virginia Humanities

The Legendary Ingramettes performed at a synagogue in Novi Sad, Serbia on 5/26/19.

Photo by Pat Jarrett, Virginia Humanities

“Mama got a call [from God] that if she came to Richmond and taught us all to sing we’d one day bless people all over the world.”

- Almeta Ingram-Miller

Watch video clips of the Ingramettes and Sherman Holmes

on tour at VirginiaHumanities.org/ingramettes-2019.

Growing up in the 1970s in College Park, Maryland with a Vietnamese-born mother and an American-born father, Virginia Humanities Fellow Kim O’Connell’s experience of identity has always been complicated. How can immigrants assimilate into a new place without sacrificing their heritage? What does citizenship mean in a state that includes nearly one million foreign-born residents? These are some of the questions that have shaped O’Connell’s work. Her forthcoming book, The Saving Grace of Spring Rolls, uses her own family history to navigate and illuminate the broader Vietnamese immigrant experience in the years during and after the Vietnam War.

The Saving Grace of

SpringRolls

By Nora Pehrson

RIGHT Kim O'Connell holds a photo of her parents on their wedding day.

Photo by Pierre Courtois, Library of Virginia17 |

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The theme of O’Connell’s work happens to align with the recently concluded “Voices of Vietnam” series by Virginia Humanities' With Good Reason radio show. Funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, “Voices of Vietnam” explored the unresolved tensions in our understanding of the Vietnam War and the perspectives and people it forever changed. The final episode in the series, “A Lost Homeland,” shared the stories of some of the Vietnamese communities that formed in America after the fall of Saigon.

Sarah McConnell, host of With Good Reason, recently sat down to talk with O’Connell about her time as a Virginia Humanities Fellow. They discussed the complexities of having a biracial and cross-cultural heritage, dissected the idea of the United States as a melting pot, pondered intergenerational shifts in values, and examined the cultural significance of spring rolls and properly cooked rice.

SM: Most Americans remember the desperate, dangerous exodus of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese families after the fall of Saigon [in 1975]. But your own mother's journey to America began before the fall.

KO: That's right. My mother was a very bright student in school and got herself hired as an instructor by the U.S. Army to teach Vietnamese to American soldiers. She was at the Okinawa army base in Japan when my father landed there in 1964. They were back in the United States as a married couple by early 1967.

My mother was able to get out of Vietnam not as a refugee, but as a young bride with a bright future. That was the reality I accepted for a long time. But I feel more empathy now for the difficulties that she went through leaving home.

SM: Your mother made sure everyone in your family spoke English, listened to American music, ate American food. Did you feel like the all-American family?

KO: Yes and no. I lived in a suburban house in College Park, Maryland, and I had white skin like my father. My mother felt a great sense of gratitude towards the United States and her way of repaying that gratitude was to be as American as possible. She was a PTA volunteer and held potluck dinners with the neighbors. But we did experience some racism because my parents were an interracial couple. People yelled things at my family and I had a neighbor boy that liked to call my brother and me “VC,” for Viet Cong. That was his supposedly funny little nickname for us. And I don't think my mother had many close friends until the Vietnamese enclave was established in Arlington. There were many years when my mother was doing her absolute best to fit in, but was probably pretty lonely as a person.

SM: Tell me about your forthcoming book.

KO: My book is a hybrid of journalism and memoir. It builds on my own personal story of trying to understand what it is about me that makes me half Vietnamese. Many Vietnamese immigrants and refugees come here and have a hard time figuring out, “How do I become American, how do I stay Vietnamese?” It's a struggle for me as a child of this interracial union to try and understand that, as well.

SM: The title of this forthcoming book, The Saving Grace of Spring Rolls, is very poignant because it is one of the things that most notably bound you and your mother at your best.

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KO: That's right. We have been cooking and eating spring rolls together for more than forty years. Whether it's spring rolls or some other dish, for a lot of Vietnamese immigrants, cooking and eating and shopping for food is such a strong way to feel connected. So that's why I chose that title.

SM: Tell me about your mother’s spring rolls and how she made them.

KO: Well, they're packed! She uses two different kinds of meat and a whole range of vegetables—carrots, onion, mushrooms, jicama, peppers, and bean sprouts. It’s all seasoned into this incredible mixture that’s even greater than the sum of its parts. Then you set up a factory on the table where you have the filling, the spring roll wrappers, and usually a little beaten egg which binds the wrapper together. And you have to fry them standing at the stove. It's a wonderful, aromatic, and very rewarding process.

SM: As part of our “Voices of Vietnam” series, we created a nationally broadcast mini documentary on the experience of Vietnamese Americans after the war. It's called “A Lost Homeland.” What stood out for you as you listened to the younger Vietnamese Americans in that episode talking about wrestling with their identity?

KO: I really related to that part of the program. The speakers talked about how the first generation of immigrants felt this kind of reverence and gratitude toward the United States, while the younger generation is more progressive. There's a little more dissent in the ranks. That's the same tension that I've experienced with my mother.

SM: You write about a Catholic priest who described the struggle to be from two countries this way: He said it's like catching two fish with two hands. It’s not easy.

KO: Yes. It's really kind of impossible, actually.

SM: I think there is a lack of understanding on the part of most of us. We think each little family, far flung from one another, will become Americanized. But sometimes the very opposite happens.

KO: That's right. We all remember the phrase about America being the great melting pot. The overarching idea of that is that people's selves kind of disappear as they melt. Now there's more of a sense that what we really need is a mosaic—

ABOVELittle Saigon was a Vietnamese neighborhood in Arlington, Virginia, that served the refugee population that immigrated after the Fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975.

Photo by Michael Horsley, courtesy Kim O'Connell

ABOVE Kim O'Connell and her mother pose for a family photo in front of a Christmas tree.

Photo courtesy Kim O'Connell

we need all the pieces to be there. The effort to spread out [immigrant communities] was an effort to make them melt away, but instead they kept sparkling and creating these enclaves, like Arlington’s former “Little Saigon.”

SM: A few years ago, you had a project that was funded in part by Virginia Humanities where you put together an oral history of the Vietnamese Americans who settled in the Arlington, Virginia area outside Washington, DC. That turned out to be the largest congregation of Vietnamese Americans on the East Coast. What did you learn about that community and what that gave to Vietnamese Americans who were settling here?

KO: It gave them a sense of home. The oral history program was really led by Virginia Tech students, and I served as a consultant. A Virginia Humanities grant allowed us to use those oral history interviews in support of a booklet that I wrote called Echoes of Little Saigon that was published with support from the Arlington County government.

What I discovered in that process was how important small acts—like shopping for a bottle of fish sauce—were for building a sense of home and a sense of peace. That's what allows you the strength to confront all the tasks that face you in terms of setting up a new life.

I was very much struck in your “Lost Homeland” program, in fact, by how some of the interviewees were talking about rice and how important it was to have rice cooked right. It sounds so basic, but actually, an investigation about the importance of rice is part of my research because rice is the lifeblood for so many cultures.

SM: Can you tell the difference between rice à la American and rice à la Vietnamese?

KO: I certainly can.

SM: Give me one tip about rice that's not just “add rice to salted boiling water.”

KO: Rinse it several times. You take all this surface starch off the rice and it just cooks up fluffy and perfect. My mother would always do that.

SM: What did your experience as a Fellow at Virginia Humanities last spring give you?

KO: The fellowship afforded me an office at the Library of Virginia for the spring semester of this year. Just to have that space and time to really think deeply about my project, to write, and do research, it was just such a gift.

Listen to With Good Reason’s “Voices of Vietnam” series and explore related lesson plans: WithGoodReasonradio.org/vietnam

Hear Vietnamese immigrant Nhi Le share the story of her journey from Vietnam to Virginia, part of the New Virginians exhibit we produced for the 2019 commemoration, American Evolution: VirginiaHumanities.org/nhi-le

Learn more about Arlington’s Little Saigon in the booklet mentioned by O’Connell: VirginiaHumanities.org/little-saigon

Hear Virginia Folklife master artist Nam Phuong Nguyen play a Vietnamese lullaby on the dan bau: VirginiaHumanities.org/dan-bau

In the spring of 2019, as the first Frank Riccio Artist-in-Residence, Amos Paul Kennedy Jr.’s collaborative project, Finding Wisdom, engaged thousands of young people and adults in Central Virginia in the production of letterpress posters featuring the proverbs and sayings important to them.

Local artists and organizations added their own aphorisms and printing to the mix. Spearheaded by UVa student artist and project coordinator Tia Nichols, venues throughout Charlottesville and the University of Virginia displayed a selection of the more than 7,000 posters generated by the project.

Kennedy’s energetic style focuses on power and poignancy over perfection. “It’s the flaw that makes you perfect,” he reflected in his March 24, 2019 artist’s talk during the Virginia Festival of the Book. “What I do, I make a perfect mess.”

In an event survey, one parent noted that they valued “the opportunity to engage with my daughter in a creative process led by an artist whose work she’s viewed, and to hear the artist speak on his work, its relevance, and the process.”

A noteworthy piece of Finding Wisdom engaged the descendants of individuals who were enslaved at Monticello. Book artists from the Virginia Center for the Book assisted in printing selections from their oral histories, as chronicled in Monticello’s Getting Word project. “The printing workshop resonated with descendants because they were able to see their family stories become art that would be shared with the community,” said Niya Bates, a public historian of Slavery and African American Life at Monticello.

The Riccio residency was created to produce meaningful interactions with a vibrant and growing community of book artists at the Virginia Center for the Book’s book arts studio in Charlottesville. The residency specifically honors and invites artists who can engage both youth and adults to inspire a lifelong love of books, paper, and printmaking. Its namesake, Frank Riccio, was a well-loved illustrator and book artist who was an integral part of the Center for the Book community before his passing in 2014. The fund and residency honor Riccio’s memory and recognize his legacy as a talented and tireless practitioner and educator in Virginia’s creative community.

To learn more about the Riccio Residency visit VaBookCenter.org.

Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. – Frank Riccio Artist-in-Residence

The Riccio Residency was generously supported in its first

year by UVA’s Executive Vice President & Provost’s Office.

Kim O'Connell was gracious enough to share her mother's recipe for Vietnamese spring rolls (Cha Giò) with us! Download it at: VirginiaHumanities.org/spring-rolls

Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. made prints with The Boys and Girls Club of Central Virginia as part of his artist residency.

Photo by Pat Jarrett, Virginia Humanities

1. NorthamptonHistoricPreservationSociety "TheLastJailontheNorthamptonCountyCourtGreen"

2. Watermen'sMuseum TidewatertoTableTravelingExhibit

3. MaymontFoundation "InServiceandBeyond"

4. DanvilleMuseumofFineArtandHistory CamillaWilliams:Danville'sDiva

5. TheValentine VoicesfromRichmond’sHiddenEpidemic

6. TheCenterforCommunityEngagement andCareerCompetitivenessatAverettUniversity AfricanandAfrican-AmericanHistoryProgramming

7. NorfolkStateUniversity VirginiaEmigrantstoLiberiaDigitalProjectPlanning

8. WesternTidewaterVirginiaHeritage,Inc. TheVirginiaPeanutStory

9. TempleBethEl JewsinVirginia:LivingNewLives,FacingOldFears

10. NewYorkWomeninFilmandTelevision Alexandria'sDollhouseHistory

11. ChristiansburgInstitute,Inc. ChristiansburgInstituteWaysideSignage

12. Gallery5 "Richmond&..."DiscussionSeries

13. YMCAofPulaskiCounty CalfeeTrainingSchool:Honoringthe Past,PlanningfortheFuture

Virginia Humanities supported these humanities projects between July 1, 2018, and June 30, 2019.

To LEARN MORE about the Grants Program, visit VirginiaHumanities.org/Grants.

GrantsCamilla Williams: Danville's Diva Danville Museum of Fine Arts & History | Danville

Danville native Camilla Williams was the first African American soprano to appear with a major American opera company. She achieved international recognition, was honored as a “Distinguished Virginian” by Governor Linwood Holton, and was the first African American to be given a “key to the city” of Danville in 1959. Her legacy as a pioneer in the arts and civil rights is exceptional but not widely known, even within the community where she was born. This grant is to help plan a series of public programs exploring Ms. Williams’ life and achievements and is designed to introduce/re-introduce her story to local residents, including teachers and students.

Voices from Richmond’s Hidden Epidemic The Valentine | Richmond

Richmond currently ranks nineteenth among localities nationwide in the number of HIV/AIDS cases per capita. This grant supports a major new exhibit exploring the story of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Richmond through the experiences of advocates, caregivers, and people currently living with the disease. The demographics of HIV/AIDS have shifted since the first cases surfaced in the 1980s, and communities of color are now disproportionally affected. Likewise, assumptions that the disease is a thing of the past and easy to treat are false but still widely prevalent. We hope the exhibit will dispel these misconceptions and also give Richmond audiences a deeper understanding of the history and human impact of this disease.

The Virginia Peanut Story Western Tidewater Virginia Heritage, Inc. | Suffolk

It would be hard to overstate the importance of peanut farming to the history, culture, economy, and communities of Western Tidewater, which includes Southampton, Surry, Sussex, and Isle of Wight Counties and the City of Suffolk. Through a series of grants, the most recent awarded in October, 2018, Virginia Humanities has supported development of an hour-long documentary film exploring this unique Virginia story through the eyes and voices of local farmers, shellers, marketers and distributors, as well as historians, who trace the “Virginia peanut” from its origins in South America, to Africa and back across the Atlantic, and into the fields and tables of Western Tidewater as well as countless products sold throughout Virginia and worldwide.

Calfee Training School: Honoring the Past, Planning for the Future YWCA of Pulaski County | Pulaski

This grant supports a “community-based historical memory project” focusing on Calfee Training School in Pulaski, one of many such schools that provided education to African American children during the years of racial segregation in Virginia. What makes Calfee's story different is an extraordinary (and largely unknown) legal case (Corbin v. County School Board of Pulaski) that challenged unequal facilities under the prevailing “separate but equal” doctrine. The story includes landmark figures like Thurgood Marshall and Oliver Hill, and the case was one of only a few successful “equalization” cases filed by the NAACP before it shifted its strategy toward challenging segregated public education at its root.

Changing Arlington's Narrative About Race “Challenging Racism,” Encore Stage & Studio, John M. Langston Citizen’s Association | Arlington

In 2018-19, with funding from the W.K Kellogg Foundation, Virginia Humanities awarded six grants to support communities statewide in local efforts to “change the narrative” about race and the history of race. Arlington is one of these. The project there (grant to “Challenging Racism”) involved creating a digital repository of resources on race and racism, holding a series of public conversations, and bringing middle-school students together with African American musicians and historians from the local community to write songs based on local history. The energy generated by this project led almost immediately to proposals from two other local organizations: one (Encore Stage and Studio) to support development of an original play in which middle and high school students worked with local historians from the Nauck/Green Valley and Halls Hill/Highview Park neighborhoods to create the script; the other (John M. Langston Citizens Assn.) to create a walking tour, concert, and community discussion focusing on the history of the Halls Hill neighborhood and the (actual) “segregation wall” that was built to separate the African American neighborhood from the surrounding white community.

4 8

14. AmericanCivilWarMuseum EnactingFreedom:BlackVirginiansin theAgeofEmancipation

15. AmericanCivilWarMuseum VictoryinDefeat:TheDavisFamilyand theConfederateMuseumintheLostCause

16. ChallengingRacism "WeC.A.N."ChangingArlington's NarrativeAboutRace

17. AmericanFrontierCultureFoundation 2019SpringLectureSeriesatthe FrontierCultureMuseum

18. GeorgeMasonUniversity Virginia'sLostAppalachianTrail

19. CatticusCorp Backlash

20. UniversityofMaryWashington MuseumExhibitiononthe HistoryofAfricanAmerican EducationinSpotsylvaniaCounty

21. CapeCharlesHistoricalSociety AccessionofRailroadArtifactDonations toCapeCharlesHistoricalSociety(CCHS)

22. VirginiaCenterfor InclusiveCommunities ChangingtheNarrative-Roanoke

23. BloodrootMountain ImaginationinEducation: WritersinModernAppalachia

24. ChryslerMuseumofArt ThomasJeffersonArchitect:Palladian Models,DemocraticPrinciples,andthe ConflictofIdeals

25. WilliamKingMuseumofArt CulturalHeritageArchive,Online

26. VideoAction,Inc. Humanities'PowertoHeal: WritingThroughIllness

27. MenokinFoundation UncoveringMenokin'sHiddenHistory

28. Cheroenhaka(Nottoway)IndianTribal HeritageFoundation,Inc. Cheroenhaka(Nottoway)IndianTribe InterpretativeTrailSigns

29. PetersburgPreservationTaskForce TheTobaccoandWater-Powered IndustriesExhibits

30. VICTORYHALLOPERA "PerformingHistory:SallyHemings intheArtist'sImagination"

31. VirginiaChamberOrchestra MusicintheLifeofEisenhower

32. LongwoodUniversity HomeandAbroadWritingProgram forMilitaryVeteransandFamily

33. PrinceWilliamPublicLibraryFoundation “AnOutrage”DiscussionGuide forPublicLibraries

34. JohnM.LangstonCitizensAssociation HallsHillHistory-ConcertandWalkingTour

35. VirginiaOrganizing B.F.YanceyHeritageandHistoryProject

36. BowerCenterfortheArts D-DayEvents,June2019

37. CaswellCountyHistoricAssociations CaswellHistorySpeaks

38. NorfolkStateUniversity “ChangingtheRacialNarrative:UsingDrama toHealHistoricDivisionsinNorfolk,VA”

39. EasternShoreofVirginiaBarrierIslandsCenter,Inc. EasternShoreMuseumNetworkBrochure

40. EncoreStage&Studio FliptheScript

41. NortheastNeighborhoodAssociation(NENA) TRHTChangingtheNarrative:Harrisonburg,VA

42. PrioBangla,Inc. PrioBanglaFestivalBooklet

43. PrioBangla,Inc. InterviewsandBookletPublication

44. StorefrontForCommunityDesign GabrielWeek2019

45. VirginiaTechFoundation,Inc. JohnJacksonPiedmontBluesRappahannockFestival

46. SpringhouseCommunitySchool FindingLiberationandTrueBelonging inCommunityThroughSong

5, 12, 14, 15, 22, 44

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24, 38

34, 40, 42, 43

3739

By Raennah Lorne Mitchell

Book ArtsThe Meaning of

C O N T E N T & C O N T E X T

ABOVE This piece by Lyall Harris is called "Chronicles of Migration."

Photo courtesy Lyall Harris

TUR

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E |

On a cool morning last August, I met Lyall Harris as she prepared to teach a class on book arts at the Virginia Center for the Book in Charlottesville. An accomplished book artist, Harris had taped brown paper to countertops and spread out magazines and slim books to inspire her students. Book arts, Harris says, isn’t prescriptive. The medium may combine text, with or without a visual element, along with sequence and structure. It “requires the reader to engage with it in a different way,” than printed books do, says Harris.

In the sunlit studio, among broadsides and printing presses, Harris and I were joined by Sarah Lawson, the assistant director of the Virginia Center for the Book and a relatively new book arts student herself. Together, we delved into questions about Harris’s path as an artist, what constitutes book arts, and how art differs from craft. Harris considered these questions within the context of creating book arts at

the Center for the Book's new home in the historic Jefferson School City Center, originally constructed in 1926 for Charlottesville’s African American students, and the responsibilities of being a good tenant there.

SL: You grew up in Lynchburg, moved elsewhere and experienced a lot of different communities, but ultimately ended up back in Virginia. What drew you back?

LH: I think I was meant to return here and contend with my past as a white person growing up in Virginia in the 1970s. And I have to say, the Center for the Book is one of the reasons I chose Charlottesville. It was important for me to have a landing pad that could support my art medium. This is such a best-kept secret that I’m afraid to tell people what a best-kept secret it is. I think it’s an amazing thing that the Center for the Book exists in Charlottesville.

SL: How do you see the Center for the Book fostering conversations and projects that help address issues like those you’ve grappled with about growing up in Virginia?

LH: The fact that we’re now located at the Jefferson School is such a beautiful and complicated thing. We have an incredible opportunity to be humble and to be honest. We are a very white organization and, I might add, so is Virginia Humanities. It’s an interesting dance. I have to make my work and I want it to be heard. At the same time, I need to step aside and not be central in my whiteness. And here we are literally at the center of the Jefferson School. It’s a privilege to be in this space and it’s good if we recognize that every time we come in here. The location sets Virginia Humanities, and the Center for the Book, on a potential path of so much growth. But that requires us stepping aside to do it. We are not directing it. But we can open to it.

SL: What do you find unique about the Virginia Center for the Book?

LH: This space is lovely, the light is amazing, and there’s a lot that can happen here—poetry readings, for instance. The annual collaborative project and the Frank Riccio Artist Residency are truly unique to this center. And you only have to take a few steps to be immersed in deep history about the building and the area at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center. Then outside the building you’re in Vinegar Hill [the historically Black neighborhood that was razed in 1964]. You have a context here specifically that is a doorway.

SL: There is so much more to book arts than just the physical art making. It’s about relationships and context and the environment in which the work is being made.

PREVIOUS BOTTOM Lyall Harris leads the class, "What Is Book Art?" at the Virginia Center for the Book at Jefferson School City Center in Charlottesville.

Photo by Pat Jarrett, Virginia Humanities

PREVIOUS TOP This piece by Lyall Harris is called "Interior Landscape."

Photo courtesy Lyall Harris

NTE

& C

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LH: That is the art part of book art. For me book art has always been that. Craft without context is just that—it’s craft.

RM: Why did you choose book arts as your medium?

LH: I think it chose me, honestly. I was a painter and dabbled in poetry. Then I found myself in Italy painting on these handmade papers in the early nineties. I started folding them and making them into sculptural objects. Then words started to appear. When I moved to San Francisco in 1998, someone told me about book arts and a place called the Center for the Book and I started taking classes. Next thing I know I got an MFA in book art and creative writing from Mills College. I had been thinking about getting a master’s for a while, but life conspired to have me wait for this because it was absolutely the right thing. I love the materials, the precision, and the craft. I love that you can speak through the structure. The first question is always, “Is book art illustration?” It can be. But it’s not only. It’s so much more.

RM: Can you speak a bit about the significance of book art in the digital age?

LH: I think it’s limitless. In the digital age so much is happening. There are books that have buttons, that light up, that get projected, that are video. “What is a book?” This is the question. I love materials so damn much I’m not that into the digital possibilities, but it’s an incredible time for people who are. The Center for the Book is all about the material and this old technology. That’s the beauty of a place like this. That’s not going to die.

SL: Talking about your work brings to the forefront that it’s meant to be engaged with, not just looked at in a case. You want people to read it and interact with it.

LH: This is the age-old question of, “How do you show book art?” You can’t experience book art unless you experience the book and hold it. It’s an intimate experience. It’s your relationship to this material, how you engage with the content and sequence.

SL: What would you tell someone who wants to learn more and become involved with the community?

LH: Google book art images and see what speaks to you. Stop by and look at some of the collaborative projects. That’s what I did before I moved here. You can alter books, you can cut into them to make them sculptural, you can create an erasure experience with the text, you can handcraft paper, you can even knit a book. There’s just everything. If you’re curious, ask yourself, what do you want to know?

SL: What do you hope to see happen here in the next couple of years?

LH: I’d love to collaborate with the kids at the Carver Recreation Center. I’d love for the African American Heritage Center to use our facility and ability to do something they want to do. If we could be of service that would be so cool. Again, not directing it. Stepping aside and letting the skills and equipment and human power help make manifest what some other people have to say.

To learn more about the Virginia Center for the Book or to sign up

for a class in book arts, visit VABookCenter.org.

BOTTOM LEFT This piece by Lyall Harris is called "Walk In My Shoes."

Photo courtesy Lyall Harris

TOP LEFT This piece by Lyall Harris is called "Sylvia Plath."

Photo courtesy Lyall Harris

Natalie Detert

Barbara M. Dickinson 2*

Betty Ann Dillon 16*

Jane De Simone Dittmar and Frank J. Squillace 2

Janet Dix 4*

Judy D. Dobbs and Robert J. Condlin

Honnor N. Dorsey 2*

Janie Dowdy and Roger Dowdy 2

Margaret B. Downing 4*

Lisa M. Draine and Joel M. Schectman, MD *

Ellen M. Dudley and Eric Seaborg *

Douglas R. Dunkel *

Dianne Duperier

Gail Lavene Dussere and David Dussere *

Bette Dzamba and David Sellers 8

Emma C. Edmunds 17*

Evelyn Edson and Andrew A. Wilson 11*

Deborah Ellis and Llewellyn B. Bigelow *

Janet A. Ellis and John C. Ellis Jr. 2*

Richard Emmett *

Carl F. Erickson *

Margaret Anne Eschenroeder and H. C. Eschenroeder Jr., MD

Stacey Evans and John F. Grant

Takako Ezell and James Ezell

Anne M. Farrell 4

Krista S. Farrell and Patrick Farrell 5

Denise Fehrenbach

Jane Elizabeth Fellows and Philip C. Fellows *

Laurie Howard Felton and Thomas F. Felton 4*

Cary S. Ferguson and Dean Ferguson

Rosewita Fernandez and Lionel Fernandez 2*

Corinne T. Field 3

Jenny G. Fife

Millie Hill Fife 2*

Elizabeth C. Fine 12*

Nani Finley and Lowery Finley 2*

Sarah Hopkins Finley and Donald J. Finley 2*

Brenda Fishel 8*

Bette Flickinger and Charles J. Flickinger, MD 2

Karen L. Foley and Daniel Foley *

Morgan E. Ford

Joan Seaver Forrest and Robert L. Forrest 2

Joanne R. Foster and James E. Foster 2

Julie Foster

Elizabeth Fowler and Victor Luftig

Leslie H. Friedman 4*

Susan B. Friedman and Frank Friedman

Elizabeth R. Fuller 6*

Judith B. Funderburk and J.Vic Funderburk 5*

Joyce Funston and Gary J. Funston *

Virginia Gardner and Stephen Gardner 2

Nancy Garretson and Stephen L. Fisher 2*

Clifford Garstang 3

Phyllis W. Gaskins and James E. Gaskins 5*

Leo Gasteiger

Christopher P. Gavaler

Elizabeth Gay

Georgia Humanities Council

Jennifer Billingsly and Matthew S. Gibson 10

Shirley M. Gibson 3*

Struthers H. Gignoux and Frederick E. Gignoux, III 2

Peter A. Gilbert and Cynthia A. Char

R R

OLL

CURRENT ASSETS

Cash and cash equivalents $3,617,672 Investments $4,630,863 Grants Receivable $609,580 Pledges Receivable $69,070 Other Receivable $456,888 Prepaid Expenses $15,651

TotalCurrentAssets $9,399,724

Fixed Assets Leasehold Improvements $26,627

Equipment

Media Equipment $230,045 Furniture and Office Equipment $135,719 Computers and Software $311,254 Other Equipment $12,043

Sub-total $715,688Less:AccumulatedDepreciation (678,935)

TotalFixedAssets $36,753

Other Assets

Investments-Permanently Restricted Endowment $535,641

TotalAssets $9,972,118

LIABILITIES AND NET ASSETS

Current Liabilities

Accounts Payable $37,093 Accrued Expenses $141,538 Grants Payable $182,940 Deferred Revenue $453,590 Current Portion of Long Term Liabilities $18,619

TotalCurrentLiabilities $833,780

Long Term Liabilities

CompensatedAbsences, $167,568 netofCurrentPortion

TotalLiabilities $1,001,348

Net Assets

Unrestricted $6,211,379 Temporarily Restricted $2,223,750 Permanently Restricted $535,641

TotalNetAssets $8,970,770

TotalLiabilitiesandNetAssets $9,972,118

StateAppropriation

19% FederalIncome

27%

Restricted&UnrestrictedCarryforward

18%

OtherIncome(All Other Sources)

Individuals

13%

UniversityofVirginia

Corporations/Foundations

2018 - 2019 REVENUE SOURCES$7.9 MILLION**The balance of income over expenses is reserved for multi-year projects.

DigitalInitiatives

14%

Radio&Podcasts

20%

Cultures&Community

12%

Grants&Fellowships

17%Books&

Literature

10%

ProgramServices

Management

12%

Advancement

10%

2018 - 2019 EXPENSES$5.9 MILLION

Figures for FY19 are Unaudited

*Includes restricted and unrestricted carryforward funds, and deferred income for FY19

VIRGINIA HUMANITIESSTATEMENT OF FINANCIAL POSITION AT JUNE 30, 2018 FOR VIRGINIA FOUNDATION FOR THE HUMANITIES AND PUBLIC POLICY

EarnedIncome

Atalissa S. Gilfoyle 4*

Katharine Scott Jones Gilliam and Alexander G. Gilliam Jr. 3*

Eddie Gilmartin 2

Marjory B. Giuliano

Molly Godby

Janet H. Goin and Robert G. Rogers *

Kim Rendelson and Gabriel Goldberg 11

Edith Brodhead Good 4*

Laura Goorvitch 2

Betty Lou Goss and Larry Z. Goss, MD *

Arnold B. Graboyes, MD and Kathleen B. Graboyes

Sharon Grazier *

Sandi Green 2

Judith R. Greenberg and Heywood L. Greenberg 2*

Dana Greene 5*

Gerri Gribi 8

Linnea M. Grim

Carol Gronstal 6*

Jacqueline R. Gropman and Alan L. Gropman 2*

Margaret M. Grove 2

Camille Gubello

Charles M. Guggenheimer and Connie C. Shannon 2*

Doniphan C. Guggenheimer 5*

Margaret Owen Guggenheimer and Timothy A. Litzenburg 6*

Edgar J. Gunter Jr. 3*

Richard B. Haines

Anne Hallerman

Peggy Halliday and John Halliday 2

Brownie Sales Hamilton

Kate Hamilton and Philip Loving

Susan Ford Hammaker 2

Barbara Y. Hamran 2*

Guy Handelman 2*

Sharon A. Harrigan and James E. Harrigan 2*

Christine A. Harris

Eleanor Marie Hartless 5

Wendy Hasenkamp

Adam Hecktman 2

Sandra Hedlund 2

Carolyn Hemphill *

Mary Jo Dollins Hendricks and T. Alan Hendricks 2

Carol A. Hendrix 25*

James M. Henry III

Millie Herget

Priscilla D. Hesford and John P. Hesford Sr. 5

Shari Heywood 2

Helen M. Hibbitts and David L. Hibbitts

Mimi Elliott Hirsch *

Wendy W. Hirsh and Jay Hirsh 10

Susan Tyler Hitchco*ck 3*

Jean L. Hitchins and John G. Hitchins Jr. *

Cathy B Hix and Charles R. Hix

Vicki Ingram Hobson and John T. Hobson

Vandivere P. Hodges and John H. Hodges 2*

Carol J. Hogg and David E. Hogg 5*

Theodore Homyk Jr. and Mona Homyk

Sarah Honenberger and Christopher J. Honenberger

Dolores Horan and Harold S. Horan

Lesley Howard *

Mary A. Reuman-Redenbaugh Howard and A. E. Dick Howard 3*

Corliss S. Hubert and Joseph Hubert 2

Barbara Humphrys and Tom Humphrys 2

Gayle Hunter Haglund and Kurt M. Haglund 2*

Almeta Ingram-Miller *

Tina Irvine

Timothy Isaacs

Anke Jackson and J.M. Russell Jackson 2*

Kathy Merlock Jackson and Joe W. Jackson 2

Flora Jacobson 5*

David J. Johnson Jr. 3*

Karen Johnson and Dennis L. Johnson, MD 2

Margaret H. Johnson and Jeffery M. Johnson

Mary C. Haycox Johnson and Pearce C. Johnson 2*

J. Ford Johnston Jr. and Susan D. Johnston 2*

David C. Jones

Diana T. Jones *

Heidi Jones *

Lewellyn S. Jordan and Daniel P. Jordan Jr. 2*

Georgia L. Joyal 2

Sydna W. Julian and William Julian *

Jeffrey Karako

Heather S. Karp and Ira W. Herbst 6*

Martha Katz-Hyman *

Barbara Milano Keenan and Alan E. Rosenblatt *

David B. Keever 2*

Aileen W. Kelly 2*

Kentucky Humanities Council

Catherine Kerrison

Evelyn Cottman Kessler and Gary D. Kessler 2

Robert D. Kidd Jr.

Judith W. Kirwan and Jeffrey L. Kirwan 10*

Roberta Kmiec and Dennis Kmiec 2*

Karen H. Knierim and R. Scott Knierim

Donna M. Knoell and Charles D. Meyer *

Dorothy B. Koopman and Mark Eaton 5*

Helen E. Kostel and George J. Kostel *

Enid Krieger

Michelle Krowl 2

Geraldine D. Kruger and Rob Myers *

Gail Kuchem and Kevin Kuchem

Barbara W. Kudravetz 2*

A. Robert Kuhlthau 4*

Lana Lambert

Nellie Pat Clements Landrum

John D. Lang *

Gabriel Laufer *

Bonnie Cooper Law *

Page R. Laws 2*

Laura Lay and David M. Lay

John M. Lee 6

Joseph P. Lehman

Mary Jean Redon Levin and G. John Levin Jr. *

David W. Levy 10*

Peppy G. Linden 3

Ginny Lindsey and Gordon R. Lindsey *

James R. Lindsey Jr. 2*

Margaret Edds Lipper and Robert J. Lipper 2

Adriana Lloyd

Marilyn Lloyd 2*

Anne R. Loach and Donald G. Loach 3*

John P. Lockney *

Marsha Login and Ivan S. Login, MD 2

Tori L. Talbot and Jonathan M. Lohman 16

Elizabeth Long *

Karen R. Long and Joseph K. Frolik

Teresa L. Long and Barry Long *

James D. Lott, Sr. *

Michael Anne Lynn *

Kathleen M. Lyons

Letty Ann Macdonald Macdonald and Robert C. Macdonald 4*

Zanne Macdonald 10*

R R

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Virginia Humanities is committed to building a vital future through planned and endowed gifts. We recognize those who have remembered us through a planned gift, a simple bequest, real or personal property, or a charitable trust. As substantial, long-term gifts, they serve as the cornerstone for the future of Virginia Humanities.

If you have already included us in your estate plan but do not see your name listed below, please let us know so that we may thank you appropriately.

Melanie Biermann and Martin I. Younker

Frances H. Bulger

Lucy C. and Randolph W. Church Jr.

Tomoko Hamada Connolly

Emma C. Edmunds

Janet Eden

Ron and Kathe Feinman

William W. Freehling

Barbara J. Fried

Susan Gaeta

Virginia Geoffrey and John P. Andelin Jr.

Michael Jay Green

Jerome S. Handler

Sheryl B. Hayes

Jo Ann and Robert G. Hofheimer Jr.

Clark Hoyt and Linda Kauss

George A. Latimer

Robert C. Nusbaum+

Elizabeth P. Piper

Daniele C. Struppa

Mary Ellen Stumpf

Ellen P. and Robert C. Vaughan III+

Jorgen and Laura Burkhardt Vik

William and Jeanne Wiley

Martha R. and Richard T. Wilson III

Elizabeth Louise Young

Cornerstone Society

Contortionist Mandkhai Erdembat started studying contortion at the age of five in Mongolia. Her apprentices and first students Ella and Emma Chuluunbat were photographed on the set of Erdembat's show, Contortionist's Seed in Fairfax, Virginia, on 3/17/19

Photo by Pat Jarrett, Virginia Humanities

Linda Wilson MacIlwaine and William A. MacIlwaine IV, MD *

Kathryn MacKay *

Eric Magrum 2*

Elliot Majerczyk 2*

Faye Male 2

Edythe Manza and Louis A. Manza

Sara Virginia Mariska

Marjory B. Giuliano Living Trust

Ann Herndon Marshall and Richard Cappuccio 2

Laura K. Marshall and Howard Z. Horstman 7

Diane Sadler Martin 2

Eduardo J. Martinez

Nancy Martin-Perdue

John E. Mason Jr. *

Nicholas A. Mattsson 2*

Gerald P. McCarthy

Scott P. McClure 2*

Sarah B. McConnell and Robert R. Gibson *

Dorothy Martin McCorkle and Maston R. McCorkle *

Sharon A. McCurdy and Charles W. McCurdy 2*

Anne McFadden 6*

Linda A. McGee 6*

Mary Katherine McGetrick and Bradley H. McGetrick

Katherine McNamara

Christina Mead

MaryLewis Bowen Meador and Daniel J. Meador Jr. 2

G. Neil Means 22*

Lindsey Mears

Christine Medlin and Gary Medlin 12

Rita Roy and Jonathan R. Merril 7*

David T. Michel *

Elizabeth M. Michel *

Betty Lou Middleditch and Leigh B. Middleditch Jr. 9*

Jarrett Millard and Stephen E. Millard *

Joseph C. Miller 4*

Lorna D. Miller and Eugene J. Meyung 14

Susan Apperson Miller, MD, and Sean Miller

Raennah Mitchell 2*

Erika Mitchell and Trey Mitchell 11*

John R. Mitterling

Lane Mitterling

Judith A. Moody and Gary Moody 15*

Gwen Moore and John C. Moore

Brenda A. Morris

Kelly P. Mortemousque and Pierre P. Mortemousque

Shelley V. Murphy *

Lynda E. Myers 7*

Michael Nadler

Christine Nardi

Gail Shea Nardi 4*

National Society of the DAR

Albert E. Neale 3

Amanda Nelsen and William Abrahamson

Suzanne M. Nelsen

Jessica Newmark and Alexander M. Newmark *

Michael L. Nicholls 9

Jill Nogueras and Peter Nogueras

Elizabeth A. Obenshain 3*

Odyssey

Michaela Oldfield *

Helen V. Oliver and Charles M. Oliver 2*

Patty Olivieri and Vincent Olivieri *

Mona Orange and Richard L. Orange 2

Priscilla A. Ord 3

Susie Orr

Beatrix Ost-Kuttner

Michael J. Otte 5

Nancy Ottenritter 4

Martha Otto and Richard L. Renfro *

Susan M. Overstreet and George A. Overstreet 3

Amber Pace and Cyrus E. Pace *

Arlene Page 7*

S. Jean Palin and Philip J. Palin 19*

Parkway Quartet

Susan Parsons

Anna Patel

Henry Pawlowski 6

Jill T. Payne *

Lydia W. Peale and John S. Peale 26*

Heather Peck

Susan Holbrook Perdue and Martin C. Perdue 11

A. Elizabeth Perry 3

Marc Pessar

Jacqueline B. Pickering and John W. Pickering 5

Jeff Pike

David S. Pildas

Pildas-Campbell Trust

Hermine Pinson 2

Elizabeth Prentice Piper 9*

Donna S. Pitt and Joseph C. Pitt 8*

The Honorable Kenneth R. Plum and Jane Plum 6*

Carol J. Pollock and James A. Pollock 5

Elizabeth Anne Powell and Robert D. Sweeney 2*

Deborah M. Prum and Bruce E. Prum Jr., MD 3

Barbara M. Raizen and Michael B. Raizen 13*

Robin Randall

Judy Rasmussen 4*

Margaret L. Rawls and Sol W. Rawls III *

Christine Cascella Reider and Frank Reider 8*

Alice L. Reilly and Kevin F. Reilly

Harriet Reynolds *

Julie Richter and Douglas H. Baker 6*

Cindy Ritter and Ted Ritter *

Eric Rizzi 5

Gale Abbott Roberts and William L. Roberts 2*

Kay T. Roberts and George H. Roberts Jr.

Tracy F. Robertson

Janet Rochester and Haydon Rochester Jr. 8*

Lois B. Rochester and Dudley F. Rochester, MD *

Rockbridge Historical Society

Douglas E. Rogers

Deborah Rolfe *

Ann R. Rooker and Dennis S. Rooker 2*

Hubert C. Roop 9

Aleene L. Rose and Robert K. Rose

Christine A. Rosenquist and Eric Rosenquist

Rodney A. Ross

Laura E. Rossmore and Edward F. Rossmoore

Whitley V. Rotgin and Charles Rotgin Jr.

Edward W. Rucker IV *

Della C. Rucks *

Carol Sacks and Robert Sacks 4*

Judith P. Sams and Coy R. Sams

Lois Jean Harrington Sandy and Claude A. Sandy 2*

Shelley Sass and Michael Geisert

Leonard R. Scharf Jr. *

Virginia R. Schiappa and Andrew Schiappa

John T. Schlotterbeck 7*

Elizabeth K. Schneider 2*

Jane Vinacour Schneider and Allan Schneider *

Claudine Schweber 4

Timothy S. Seibles

Susan M. Seidler and Robert O. Whaley Jr. 5*

Aileen Selmeczi and Gary Selmeczi

Beverley Martin Sessoms and William D. Sessoms Jr.

Barbara Shansby *

Jayne Shaw and Brian Shaw *

Julia L. Shields 12*

Gail Shirley-Warren and Thomas E. Warren

Mitchell Shively 7

Ellen Olin Shrum

Mary U. Sihler and William W. Sihler

Jeanne A. Siler 10

Shamim Sisson and James M. Cooper 6

Allison M. Sleeman and John K. Sleeman 9

Janet L. Smalley 2

Ashlin W. Smith 2*

Karla Smith 10*

Louise Smith

Diane W. Solatka and Michael J. Solatka 4

St. James Armenian Church

Janice F. Stalfort and John A. Stalfort, II 3*

Lucia C. Stanton 5*

Myra L. Stephenson 6*

Grace M. Stillwell 2*

Anne E. Strange and Keith Strange 9*

Lynda Strickler and Steve Strickler *

Betty F. Strider 2

Catha Stroupe

Christine Sweeters 3

Kristin M. Swenson and Craig L. Slingluff Jr., MD *

Jill Sykes and Daniel E. Sykes

Ina Szekely

Cynthia P. Szwajkowski and Leslie M. Szwajkowski

David G. Taylor

Jean M. Taylor 9*

Jordan P. Taylor 2*

Heather M. Thomas and William G. Thomas, III

Suzanne L. Thorniley

Barbara Caryl Tobey 5

Rebecca Tollefson

Robert B. Toplin *

Susan S. Tremblay and Richard M. Tremblay 4*

Laura M. Troy and Robert J. Troy *

Tom Trykowski *

Betsy Tucker and Herbert F. Tucker 2*

Abigail Turner and Dave Watson 2

Jack Turner

Sam R. Uppala 3

Rose M. Van Epp

Charlotte P. Black-Van Groll and Theo van Groll

Varian Medical Systems

Michelle E Venuti and Frank Venuti 2

Virginia Department of Education

Lucie L. Vogel 2

George I. Wagner 2

Gloria Wallace 6*

Sally Trapnell Warthen and Harry J. Warthen III 10*

Elizabeth Baldwin Waters and David B. Waters 2

Krista L. Weih and Kevin Quirk 2

Lola Weir and Mark Barnhill *

Judy Weiss

Anne Dudley Wescott

Charles W. White *

Patricia H. White and Stephen K. White 3*

Duncan M. Whittome 3

Susan Wight and Richard C. Wight III *

Wild Birds Unlimited

Wildlife Center of Virginia

Llwanda K. Williams and D. Alan Williams 5*

Roger D. Williams 12

Margaret Ruth Spurlin Willis and Lloyd L. Willis II 2*

Eric S. Wilson

Jennifer N. Wingard

Brendan M. Wolfe 9*

Sharon Woltz *

Joyce N. Wooldridge and William C. Wooldridge 4*

Rafia M. Zafar

Beverly G. Zinck and James R. Zinck 10*

R R

OLL

Rita Dove, Esi Edugyan, and John Edgar Wideman discuss the meanings of race, violence, and freedom, as explored in their acclaimed fiction during the 2019 Virginia Festival of the Book.

Photo by Peter Hedlund, Virginia Humanities

2nd Act Books

A Pimento Catering

Jennifer Ackerman

Kristin Adolfson

Albemarle Baking Company

Sandra Anderson

Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards presented by the Cleveland Foundation

Anonymous (2)

Rachel Baker

Josef Beery

Bonnie Bernstein

Daniel Bieker

Jeanine Braithewaite

Carolyn Cades

CalmingPoints Therapeutic Massage

Charlottesville Radio Group

Charlottesville Tomorrow

Allison Church

CitySpace

Common House

Congregation Beth Israel

Lee Cornwell

Creative Framing, LTD. & The Art Box

C-VILLE Weekly

Lucas Czarnecki

Dean Dass

Gifts In KindEach year Virginia Humanities recognizes in-kind contributions from those who have hosted events, contributed artwork to the Raucous Auction, provided goods and services for programs, and promoted our programming. Their contributions help us reduce expenses, secure additional funding, increase programmatic quality and exposure, and focus on our important work throughout the Commonwealth.

Natalie Detert

Downtown Business Association of Charlottesville

Flanders State of the Art

Norma Geddes

Carol Gilbert Sacks

Grit Coffee

Lyall Harris

Wendy Hasenkamp

Charlotta Helleberg

Sandy Hodge

Jefferson Madison Regional Library

Jefferson School African American Heritage Center

Karen Johnson

Margaret Johnson

Amos Paul Kennedy Jr.

Andrew King

Lana Lambert

Kevin McFadden

Katherine McNamara

Lindsey Mears

National Book Foundation

Parkway Quartet

Heather Peck

Portico Church

Douglas Rogers

Francesco Ronchetti

Roger Charles Sherry

Jeanne Siler

Janet Smiley

Louise Smith

SPAIN Arts & Culture

Michael Suarez

The Daily Progress

The Paramount Theater

Unity of Charlottesville

UVA Contemplative Sciences Center

Rose Van Epp

Theo Van Groll

Vault Virginia

Village School

Virginia Film Festival

Elizabeth Waters

Wild Birds Unlimited

Wildlife Center of Virginia

Williams Sonoma at Stonefield

Jennifer Wingard

WMRA / WEMC Public Radio

WTJU 91.1FM

WVPT / WHTJ PBS Community Idea Stations

WVTF Public Radio

Cauline Yates

Elizabeth Stark Barton

Leonard Dreyfus

George K. Kudravetz

Robert Collier Nusbaum

Robert C. Vaughan, III

Karenne Wood

In MemoriamThe Board and Staff of Virginia Humanities remember with gratitude the following donors who passed away during the year. Their heartfelt contributions helped to shape our organization, develop new programs, and provide enthusiastic support for our work.

WHAT WE DO

49Made 49 virtual tours of historic sites available

53Conducted 53 projects with K-12 schools

42 Live streamed 42 public events

21%

42% 3%

343,000+IN-PERSONEVENTATTENDEES

9,500+VOLUNTEERHOURSWORKED

337COMMUNITYPARTNERSHIPS

NONPROFITSRECEIVEDMORETHAN$300KINGRANTS

TOTALMINUTESOFRADIO/PODCASTS

5,200+

Here'saquickbreakdownofthenearly1,000 activitiesourprogramsandgranteesconductedlastyear.

AUTHORVISITSINSCHOOL

RADIO/TV/PODCASTAUDIENCE 48,000,000+

TV, RADIO, PODCASTS

WEBSITES/DIGITAL

PUBLICATIONS

EXHIBITIONS

HISTORIC PRESERVATION

K-12 PROJECTS

OTHER

PUBLIC CONVERSATIONS

FESTIVALS & PERFORMANCES

In Memory of Elizabeth Stark BartonKristin AtelekDiane T. Atkinson and Frank B. AtkinsonDeborah BartleLee Forrester BartonJane E. Bowers and Gerald M. BowersNancy BrizendineDiane Seckora Clark and David Alan Clark Takako Ezell and James EzellDenise FehrenbachSarah Hopkins Finley and Donald J. FinleyDr. Elizabeth Fowler and Dr. Victor LuftigLinnea M. GrimCamille GubelloKate Hamilton and Philip LovingChristine A. HarrisJohn T. Hobson and Vicki Ingram HobsonCathy B. Hix and Charles HixJo Ann M. Hofheimer and Robert G. Hofheimer Jr. Timothy IsaacsMary C. Haycox Johnson and Pearce C. JohnsonDavid C. JonesJohn T. KneeboneGail Kuchem and Kevin KuchemLaura Lay and David M. LayJoseph P. LehmanAdriana LloydBradley H. McGetrick and Mary Katherine McGetrickJill Nogueras and Peter NoguerasSusie OrrAlice L. Reilly and Kevin F. ReillyTracy F. RobertsonLaura E. Rossmore and Edward F. RossmoreSaint James Armenian ChurchVirginia R. Schiappa and Andrew SchiappaBeverley M. Sessoms and William D. Sessoms Jr.Martha J. Sims and Hunter W. Sims Jr.John W. Stark and Jane Barbieri StarkJill Sykes and Daniel E. SykesCynthia P. Szwajkowski and Leslie M. SzwajkowskiRebecca TollefsonAnne Dudley Wescott Virginia Association of MuseumsVirginia Department of EducationVirginia Social Studies Leaders Consortium

In Honor of David BearingerCamille WellsBrooks Miles Barnes and Anne Essic BarnesKatherine L. BrownMelanie J. Biermann and Martin I. Younker

In Memory of Lewis T. Booker Sr.Nancy B. Booker

In Memory of Robert D. BrickmanSusan M. Brickman

In Memory of Sandra Crawford CampbellMargaret Ruth Spurlin Willis and Lloyd L. Willis, II

In Honor of Nancy Coble DamonEnid Krieger

In Memory of Leonard DreyfusLydia W. Peale and Dr. John S. Peale

In Honor of Renee GrishamLinda Wilson MacIlwaine and William A. MacIlwaine, IV

In Honor of Doniphan C. Guggenheimer and Charles M. Guggenheimer

Margaret O. Guggenheimer

In Honor of Margaret O. GuggenheimerCharles M. Guggenheimer and Connie C. ShannonDoniphan C. Guggenheimer

In Memory of Charity T. HainesRichard B. Haines

In Honor of Jo Ann M. Hofheimer and Robert G. Hofheimer Jr.

Fred Wolf and Peggy Wolf

In Memory of Maggie L. IngramAlmeta Ingram-Miller

In Honor of Kirkland M. Kelley and Margerite K. Vail

Harriet Reynolds

In Memory of James L. KellyAileen W. Kelly

In Memory of George K. KudravetzBarbara W. Kudravetz

Honorary and Memorial GiftsIn Memory of Carol J. Troxell

AnonymousElizabeth R. FullerBetsy Bloom and Thomas A. Bloom Louisa Barrett

In Honor and Memory of Robert C. Vaughan III

Anne Betts AllenSusan E. Bacik and R. Andrew Wyndham Faith Andrews Bedford and Robert F. BedfordCarolyn W. Bell and Alex W. BellJennifer Billingsly and Matthew s. GibsonBrooke BowersoxCharlottesville Area Community FoundationAnne Cleveland and Sam ClevelandSusan L. Coleman and Michael A. ColemanDina CopelmanJennifer ComptonRajiv D’Cruz and Sara V. MariskaNancy Coble Damon and Frederick H. DamonJudy D. DobbsDiane DuperierEmma C. EdmundsCorinne T. FieldAnn D. FoardMorgan E. FordCynthia K. Fralin and W. Heywood Fralin Sr.Joanna V. GabbinGeorgia Humanities Council Peter A. GilbertMolly Godby

Janet H. Goin and Robert G. RogersArnold B. GraboyesMeredith Strohm Gunter and Bradley H. GunterBrownie Sales HamiltonSusan Ford HammakerJerome S. HandlerStuart Hardwick Jr.Carol A. HendrixJames Marshall Henry IIIMillie HergetJay Hirsh and Wendy W. HirshSusan T. Hitchco*ckLewellyn S. Jordan and Daniel P. Jordan Jr.Kentucky Humanities CouncilCatherine KerrisonJohn T. Kneebone and Elizabeth RoderickNellie Pat Clements LandrumAnna Logan Lawson and Thomas Towles LawsonPeppy G. LindenJames David Lott Sr.Esther MackintoshEdythe Manza and Louis A. ManzaGerald P. McCarthyKevin J. McFaddenMental Health ServicesJoseph C. MillerLorna D. MillerSusan Apperson Miller and Sean MillerJohn R. Mitterling and Lane MitterlingMarty Moon and Butch DaviesJohn C. MooreLynda E. MyersChristine NardiSuzanne M. Nelsen

Priscilla A. OrdArlene PageJanet Swenson Pearson and Richard D. PearsonE. Clorisa PhillipsElizabeth Anne Powell and Robert D. SweeneyJohn A. Ragosta, Esq., and Elizabeth A. RagostaRaymond James Charitable Endowment FundGeorge H. Roberts Jr.Rockbridge Historical SocietyCharles Rotgin Jr.Edward W. Rucker IVJohn B. RudderEleanor B. ShannonEllen Olin ShrumMary U. Sihler and William W. SihlerElizabeth B. Smiley and Andrew S. ChanceyJohn W. Stark and Jane Barbieri StarkHeather M. ThomasJack TurnerLlwanda K. Williams and D. Alan WilliamsEric Stephen Wilson

In Honor of Emily A. WoodrumBarbara M. Dickinson

In Honor of R. Andrew WyndhamPeter S. Onuf and Kristin K. Onuf

In Honor of Jane B. KulowPeggy Halliday and John HallidayJane De Simone Dittmar and Frank J. SquillaceMartha J. Sims and Hunter W. Sims Jr.

In Memory of Constance C. LawsPage R. Laws

In Honor of John Wingo LongElizabeth Long

In Honor of Kirk MarinerKellee L. Blake

In Honor of Sarah B. McConnell Leigh B. Middleditch Jr.

In Honor of Kevin J. McFaddenTeresa L. Long and Barry Long

In Honor of Nancy K. O’BrienJenny G. Fife

In Memory of Charles L. Perdue Jr. and Nancy Martin-Perdue

Susan H. Perdue and Martin C. Perdue

In Honor of Read It Again, SamBarbara Caryl Tobey

In Memory of Frank J. Riccio IIKristin AdolfsonCarol W. Buckner and Murray D. BucknerKevin McFaddenDavid Sullivan

In Memory of Rosel H. SchewelPriscilla Anne Burbank and Michael J. SchewelPriscilla C. Little and David Little

In Honor of Martha J. SimsJanet A. Ellis and John C. Ellis Jr.Susan Wight and R.C. Wight III

In Memory of Lloyd T. Smith Jr.Ashlin W. Smith

In Memory of David G. TaylorNancy Coble Damon and Frederick H. Damon

In Honor of W. McIlwaine Thompson Jr.Janet H. Miller and Edward M. Miller Mark Cline and his apprentice Brently Hilliard brought

several sculptures to the 2019 Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Showcase at James Monroe's Highland in Charlottesville on 5/5/19.

Photo by Pat Jarrett, Virginia Humanities

Friends of Folklife is an annual giving circle connecting Virginia Folklife Program donors of $1000 or more; it helps deepen and sustain the dynamic cultural legacy created by the program.

2018-19 FRIENDS OF FOLKLIFE:Anonymous

Bama Works Fund at the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation Lora Bottinelli

Community Foundation of Greater Richmond

Janet Eden

Sally Herman and Stephen Herman

Julia McCrea Kudravetz

Tucker Lemon and Catherine Lemon

Marc Lipson and Ellen Climo

B. Thomas Mansbach

LIssa Merrill

National Council for The Traditional Arts

Michelle Olson and Chris Olson

Elsie Thompson and Mac Thompson

Trade Root Music Group, LLC

Donna Treacy and Dennis Treacy

UVA Community Credit Union

Venture Richmond

Literary Leaders is an annual giving circle connecting Virginia Festival of the Book donors of $2500 or more; it supports the vitality of Festival programming each year, including author visits to K-12 schools.

2018-19 LITERARY LEADERS:Anonymous

Astraea

Antoinette and Benjamin Brewster

Katherine Brooks and George Beller

Candie and Chuck Bruse

Diana and Melvin Burruss, Esq.

Special FundsIn addition to donations to the Virginia Humanities Fund and our programs, Virginia Humanities receives contributions to giving circles, named funds, and endowments that have been established for special purposes and to sustain our programs over time.

Betsy and James Greene

Renee and John Grisham

Jerry Handler

Charles Heiner

Katherine Neville

Susan and Paul Yesawich

The Authors Fund was established in 2016 to support the Virginia Festival of the Book’s continued excellence in recruiting high-caliber and diverse authors to speak at programs for broad public audiences.

2018-19 AUTHORS FUND DONORS:Lawrence Bechtel

Candie and Chuck Bruse

Melinda Davis

Debora Hoard

Brian King

Kathleen Lyons

Cecilia Mills and Philip Schrodt

Suzanne Thorniley

Judy Weiss

Carol Troxell Fund was established in 2017 in memory of former New Dominion Bookshop owner Carol Troxell; it celebrates voracious reading and supports a solo featured author during the Virginia Festival of the Book.

2018-19 TROXELL FUND DONORS:Candie and Chuck Bruse

Elizabeth Fuller

Clifford Garstang

Cindy Hoehler-Fatton and Robert Fatton

Mary Huey

Shamim Sisson and Jim Cooper

Betty Strider

Chris Sweeters

Frank Riccio Fund was established in 2018 to honor Virginia Center for the Book member artist and educator Frank Riccio; it supports an annual visiting book artist: the Frank Riccio Artist-in-Residence.

2018-19 RICCIO FUND DONORS:Kristin Adolfson

Anonymous

Josef Beery and Gay Beery

Bonnie Bernstein and Hank Dobin

Joanna Berry

Blue Whale Books, Inc.

Carol Buckner and Murray Buckner

Carolyn Cades and Daniel Engel

Jim Childress and Barbara Payne

Janet Eden

Erica Goldfarb and Adam Goldfarb

John Grant and Stacey Evans

Sandra Hodge and Robert Hodge

Angie Hogan and Kevin McFadden

Ann Marshall and Richard Cappuccio

Katherine McNamara

Nina Riccio

Tara Riccio

Shelley Sass and Michael Geisert

Gioia Riccio and David J. Sullivan III

The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation

The Van Brimer Family Foundation

George A. and Frances Bibbins Latimer Fund was established by George Latimer in 2018 to honor his late wife, Eastern Shore native and prominent community historian Frances Bibbins Latimer; it supports grant projects that document, preserve and celebrate African American life in Virginia.

Rosel Schewel Fund was established by an anonymous donation in 2019 to honor the vision, leadership and achievements of Virginia Humanities’ longest-serving board member and Lynchburg-based educator, philanthropist and activist, Rosel Schewel; it aims to amplify the voices of, support the work of and honor the achievements of women in Virginia.

Edna & Norman Freehling Fellowship was established by historian and Virginia Humanities Senior Fellow William W. Freehling in memory of his parents; it supports research and writing on the South Atlantic region, including the Caribbean South.

Emilia Galli Struppa Fellowship was created by Chapman University Chancellor and former Virginia Humanities board member Daniele Struppa in memory of his mother; it supports research and writing in history and literary studies.

Encyclopedia Virginia Endowment was established to support the ongoing financial needs of Encyclopedia Virginia; it was established by then-Board chairman Barbara J. Fried.

Virginia Center for the Book Endowment supports the Center's book-related activities; it was established by donor Michael Jay Green.

Virginia Humanities Endowment was established to support the ongoing financial needs of Virginia Humanities.

SPE

CIAL

Endowed Funds

Vaughan Fund for Strategic Initiatives was established in 2017 to honor founding president Rob Vaughan and ensure the organization’s thriving future; managed by the Executive Director, it supports strategic initiatives for Virginia Humanities’ most pressing needs. We are grateful to the numerous donors that gave to the fund this year in honor and memory of Rob and his profound legacy of public service. Please see the “In Memory Of” section for a full list of Vaughan Fund donors.

Karen Cogar Abramson

Alexandria, VA

Wayne B. Adkins

New Kent, VA

Edward L. Ayers

Charlottesville, VA

Megan Beyer

Alexandria, VA

Kellee Blake

Parksley, VA

Dulce Carrillo

Falls Church, VA

Marjorie Clark

North Chesterfield, VA

Susan Colpitts

Norfolk, VA

Howard (Hank) Dobin

Lexington, VA

William Mark Habeeb

(Mark)

Arlington, VA

Chris Head

Roanoke, VA

Lenneal J. Henderson

Claremont, VA

Steve Herman

Bethesda, MD

Jo Ann M. Hofheimer

Virginia Beach, VA

Iris E. Holliday

North Chesterfield, VA

Clark Hoyt

Great Falls, VA

Rishi Jaitly

Charlottesville, VA

Sylvester Johnson

Blacksburg, VA

Lauranett L. Lee

North Chesterfield, VA

General Lester L. Lyles

Vienna, VA

Kelly O’Keefe

Richmond, VA

Edward Scott

Staunton, VA

W. McIlwaine (Mac)

Thompson Jr.

Charlottesville, VA

Will Trinkle

Charlottesville, VA

VIRGINIA HUMANITIES145 Ednam Drive

Charlottesville, VA 22903-4629

434.924.3296 fax [emailprotected]

Facebook: VirginiaHumanitiesTwitter: VAHumanities

Virginia Humanities is an independent, nonprofit, tax-exempt organization.

StaffOFFICEOFTHEDIRECTOR

Matthew Gibson, Executive Director

Raennah L. Mitchell,

Assistant to the Executive Director

ADVANCEMENT

Maggie Guggenheimer, Chief Advancement Officer

Kevin Hoffer, Advancement Associate

Trey Mitchell, Director of Communications

Greg Willett, Advancement Associate

PLANNINGANDMANAGEMENT

Kevin McFadden, Chief Operating Officer

Cary Ferguson, Fiscal Assistant

Judy Moody, Receptionist

Jeannie Palin, Receptionist

Gail Shirley-Warren, Business Manager

Tori Talbot, Events Manager

Grants and Fellowships David Bearinger, Director, Grants

Carolyn Cades, Associate Director, Grants

Jeanne Nicholson Siler, Director, Fellowships

Community ProgramsAFRICANAMERICANPROGRAMS

Justin Reid, Director

HISTORYUNITED

Karice Luck, Program CoordinatorChad Martin, DirectorEmma Edmunds, Project Historian

VIRGINIAFOLKLIFEPROGRAM

Jon Lohman, DirectorLilia Fuquen, Project Director, Food & Community

Pat Jarrett, Media Specialist

Digital InitiativesDISCOVERYVIRGINIA

Sue H. Perdue, Director of Digital Strategy

ENCYCLOPEDIAVIRGINIA

Miranda Bennett, Assistant Editor Peter Hedlund, DirectorDonna Lucey, Media Editor

John Rhea, Web Designer/Developer

Radio and PodcastsBACKSTORY

Matt Darroch, Associate Producer

Melissa Gismondi, Senior Producer

Gabriel Hunter-Chang, Digital Media Associate

Jamal Millner, Studio and Technical Director

Charlie Shelton-Ormond, Associate Producer

Diana Williams, Digital Editor and Strategist

WITHGOODREASON

Cassius Adair, Associate Producer

Sarah McConnell, Executive Producer and Host

Allison Quantz, Senior Producer

Virginia Center for the Book Jane Kulow, Director

Sarah Lawson, Assistant Director

Garrett Queen, Book Arts Program Director

Bellamy Shoffner, Youth Programming Associate

BOARD OF DIRECTORS VIRGINIA HUMANITIES IS THE STATE HUMANITIES COUNCIL. WE AIM TO TELL THE STORIES OF ALL VIRGINIANS—OR, BETTER YET, FIND WAYS FOR PEOPLE TO TELL THEIR OWN STORIES.

We want to connect Virginians with their history and culture and, in doing that, help bring us all a bit closer together.

Virginia Humanities is headquartered in Charlottesville at the University of Virginia, but our work covers the Commonwealth. Founded in 1974, we are one of fifty-six organizations created by the National Endowment for the Humanities to make the humanities available to all Americans. To learn more visit VirginiaHumanities.org

Our supporters make the programs featured in this publication—and so much more—possible.

Make a donation to Virginia Humanities online at

VirginiaHumanities.org/Support.

SUSTAINABLY PRODUCED Virginia Humanities is committed to being a good steward of our shared resources. This publication was produced with sustainably sourced paper and soy based ink at an approximate cost of $1.94 per copy.

Named to honor the vision, leadership, and achievements of Virginia Humanities’ longest-serving board member, the Rosel Schewel Fund supports humanities programs and initiatives that are developed and managed by women, or that address topics of importance in the history and cultural contributions of women.

The commitment to honor the untold stories of Virginia has been at the center of our work for the past forty-five years. It’s a commitment that Rosel Schewel passionately shared, and one that she advanced both as a member of the Virginia Women’s Cultural History Project Advisory Committee and as a chairwoman of the Virginia Humanities Board.

The Rosel Schewel Fund builds on that legacy by making it possible for us to support exciting new women-led and women-focused projects.

Thanks to an anonymous donation of $100,000 and in honor of Rosel Schewel’s active participation in the League of Women Voters, Virginia Humanities will formally launch this fund in 2020, with statewide programming in Lynchburg that commemorates the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment (see "Women Front and Center").

Contributions to the Rosel Schewel Fund are encouraged and will support women's programming in the public humanities for many years to come.

The Rosel Schewel Fund for Women’s Programming

FOR MORE INFORMATION, please contact

the Virginia Humanities Advancement office at 434-924-6562.

Views is coordinated by the Office of the Director, with content editing by Trey Mitchell, Raennah Mitchell, Carolyn Cades, and Caitlin Newman. Contact Trey Mitchell at [emailprotected] with inquiries or comments.

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VIRGINIA HUMANITIES GRANTS DEADLINES

Open Grant applications are considered in two

grant cycles per year, with these deadlines:

OCTOBER 15 APRIL 15

Draft proposals due Draft proposals due

October 5 – decisions April 5 – decisions

in early December in early June

Discretionary Grant applications may be submitted

at any time throughout the year. For full application

guidelines, please visit VirginiaHumanities.org/

grants.

BOARD NOMINATIONS

The Virginia Humanities Nominating Committee

welcomes suggested names for nomination,

specifically individuals who, when brought

together as a board, broadly represent the

geographic regions and demographic makeup

of today’s Virginia. The committee strives

to sustain a balance among scholars in the

humanities, civic and business leaders, and the

general public. Nominations are coordinated

by the Office of the Director. Please send

suggestions to [emailprotected].

FALL 2019 · 2020-02-18 · brought psychologist and author Beverly Tatum to the Norfolk region to speak about the impact of privilege and implicit bias on the region. ... Ingramettes - [PDF Document] (2024)

References