When one considers the term massive–or “collective”–resistance, we might try and channel Thoreauian idealism and think of a movement by a downtrodden people to subvert or protest a tyrannical status quo. In the case of Virginia history, however,  “Massive Resistance” was anything but a subversive movement for high moral principles. Massive Resistance was the political–and [...]

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of Encyclopedia Virginia there was Andrew Chancey [pronounced 'An-drëw Chän-see'; aka VFH Director of Planning and Management and Executive Editor of Encyclopedia Virginia]. Andrew–known as “Andy” to his friends outside the office–came to the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities over eight years ago. He rose in the VFH ranks quickly, going from a half-time employee [...]

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This morning’s Washington Post reports that archaeologists have found the likely site of George Washington’s childhood home near Fredericksburg. They’ve also uncovered marbles, wig curlers, utensils, dinnerware, and a pipe with a Masonic crest on it. “What’s so great about this dig is that when people talk about Washington, they always talk about his adult [...]

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Last week, the blog Shorpy posted a series of photographs of the dead from the Civil War battlefield of Petersburg. Like the one above, they’re tough to look at and even tougher to consider fully for all their moral, political, social, military, and even aesthetic ramifications. There’s a lot going on, in other words.
The Shorpy [...]

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Rachel Quimby, Associate Producer of the new history-focused radio show BackStory, has submitted this description of the program. Readers of the Encyclopedia Virginia blog should check it out . . .
VFH radio is proud to announce the launch of BackStory with the American History Guys—the nation’s ONLY call-in history show! Each week, renowned (but never [...]

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George Garrett died on Sunday at the age of 78. He was, in the words of the Virginia Quarterly Review’s blog, a “prolific author, screenwriter, professor, and beloved Charlottesville figure.” He was cofounder of the AWP, a national association of writers and writing programs. Perhaps most of all, he was a mentor to many, many [...]

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First it was Ed Ayers. Soon after he joined Encyclopedia Virginia’s Editorial Advisory Board he was named the ninth president of the University of Richmond.
Then it was Sandy Treadway. On July 1, 2007 she became the Librarian of Virginia after unanimous appointment.
And we recently received more good news: yesterday Paul Levengood, another stalwart member of [...]

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Last Saturday, I sat through a two-hour discussion on slave housing. I’ll admit that it was a tiny bit tedious, eighteenth-century building techniques not being my primary interest, but I was taping it as a favor for my absent friend, the historian Henry Wiencek. Anyway, a scholar from Mount Vernon was explaining how he had [...]

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This morning’s Washington Post tells of the Library of Congress’s effort to reproduce Thomas Jefferson’s famous library. The first third of his 6,000-plus volumes were, unsurprisingly, in the LOC’s own collection. After all, that’s where the collection came from in the first place (in 1815, an always debt-ridden Jefferson donated his library to the fledgling [...]

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I may be biased (I almost certainly am), but I tend to think that some of our richest and most interesting material is in our pictures and photographs. Take the above photograph, which will accompany our entry on the Great Depression, as an example. It’s one of the thousands of images commissioned by the Federal [...]

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