‘On Juneteenth’ author gives Black History Month Lecture in Richmond

Bailee Padgett, Contributing Writer

Harvard law and history professor Annette Gordon-Reed visited the James Branch Cabell Library on Thursday, Feb. 10 to deliver VCU’s 21st annual Black History Month Lecture about her most recent 2021 publication, “On Juneteenth.”

Juneteenth, celebrated on June 19, honors the day Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas, in 1865 and announced that the over 250,000 enslaved African Americans had been freed by the Emancipation Proclamation. The proclamation had been decreed over six months prior, according to the National Museum of African American History and Culture. 

The audience included VCU alumni, students and staff to hear Gordon-Reed’s lecture — including VCU alumna Stephanie Holt, who said she has a connection to the VCU library’s book club and staff.

“The event was wonderful and very informative. I learned a lot about Texas history, which isn’t generally taught in Virginia, as well as the African American viewpoint which is always interesting in understanding between people,” Holt said.

The lecture discussed the historian’s viewpoint on the journey the United States has taken to reach the prevalence of Juneteenth today, including Texas’ origins as a state and discrimination against African Americans with personal accounts and anecdotes from Gordon-Reed.

Juneteenth became a state holiday for Virginia after former Gov. Ralph Northam proposed the executive order in 2020, according to the Governor of Virginia’s website.

University spokesperson Sue Robinson stated that the VCU library’s office compiled a list of potential speakers before selecting Gordon-Reed. Gordon-Reed offers one of the most authoritative voices on race and history in America, according to Robinson.

University spokesperson Sue Robinson stated that the VCU library’s office compiled a list of potential speakers before selecting Gordon-Reed. Gordon-Reed offers one of the most authoritative voices on race and history in America, according to Robinson.

As the first African American recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for history, Gordon-Reed is recognized as a nationally significant public intellect and a leading scholar of U.S. history, according to Robinson.

Dean of Libraries and university librarian Irene Herold helped coordinate this event for students and faculty members in the community, according to Robinson. Herold supervises the James Branch Cabell Library on VCU’s Monroe Park Campus and the Health Sciences Library located on the MCV Campus, according to VCU library’s website. 

“Annette Gordon-Reed’s work speaks to our times, illuminating history that does not shy away from the harrowing and tragic, but is based upon scrupulous scholarship and examination of primary source documentation,” Herold stated. “She exemplifies scholarly research that makes a librarian’s heart sing.” 

During the lecture, Gordon-Reed talked about her family’s history, and how writing the novel would integrate her own personal experiences and accounts. Growing up in Conroe, Texas, members of her family wouldn’t spend the night for fear of the town’s reputation, according to Gordon-Reed.

“My parents decided to send me to a white school, that would be their choice. I had gone to school at Booker T. Washington, which was a K-12, the school for Blacks in Conroe, where my mother taught,” Gordon-Reed said during the lecture. “My older brothers were in Booker T. as well, but they wanted to send me to Anderson Elementary School, which was a white school.”

Gordon-Reed said the decision her parents made was their contribution to the civil rights movement during the mid-1960s. Her schooling made her similar to Brown v. Board of Education’s famous Ruby Bridges, the first African American student to integrate an elementary school in Texas, according to Gordon-Reed.

The role she played within her community as the first African American child to enter Conroe, Texas’ school system helped to kickstart the integration period for other schools at that time and demonstrated the power which one individual had to instill change, according to NPR.

“Occasionally there would be delegations of people who would kind of come and stand in the doorway and look at the scene, one Black child with the other 20 and 25 kids, So I knew it was a big deal.” Gordon-Reed said.

Her studies have altered the conversation about slavery in the United States by navigating the comprehension of race and the underrepresented in the Colonial Era of America, according to an article by Gordon-Reed.

She has received prestigious accolades including the Pulitzer Prize in History, making her the first African American woman to achieve that honor. Her most renowned work, “The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family,” also won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2008 according to the Harvard University website.

The lecture came to a close with questions from members of the audience, both in person and on Zoom. She signed copies of her book following the Q&A.

Gordon-Reed said during the lecture that the idea for her novel began at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, following one family’s and one society’s part of a larger journey to realize the ideals expressed in the United States’ Declaration of Independence.

“I know that as a historian, I’m not supposed to believe that there’s inevitable progress, that’s what [Thomas] Jefferson believed,” Gordon-Reed said. “But the takeaway is that we each have a role to play to try to fulfill that promise.”