History professor Marcus Rediker teaches a course on Colonial America at the University of Pittsburgh. Today’s lecture focuses on the origins of the slave trade to the Americas between 1640 and the early 1800s.

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We visited George Washington’s Mount Vernon, where visitors find newly re-interpreted slave quarters and a more historically accurate and nuanced depiction of slave life in 18th century Virginia. We hear from Dennis Pogue, Vice President of Preservation, and curator Susan Schoelwer, who tell us what archaeological research reveals about the enslaved people who worked Washington’s plantation.

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This week we join Virginia Tech History Professor Beverly Bunch-Lyons as she teaches a university class on women and slavery, and how they resisted. Professor Bunch-Lyons and her students read first-hand accounts from former slave women about their experiences. Virginia Tech is in Blacksburg, Virginia.

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James Madison, the fourth President of the United States & often referred to as the "Father of the Constitution," owned about a hundred slaves at Montpelier, his 4600- acre estate in Orange County, Virginia.  American History TV traveled 90 miles south of the nation's capital to learn about an archaeological project investigating the enslaved communities of James Madison's Montpelier.

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C-SPAN’s Local Content Vehicles take American History TV on the road. Throughout the weekend of June 15-17 we feature the history of Raleigh, North Carolina.

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Author and professor Jonathan Gill talks about his book “Harlem: The Four Hundred Year History from Dutch Village to Capital of Black America.” To illustrate the scope of the Harlem Renaissance, Professor Gill discusses James Weldon Johnson -- a poet, songwriter, author, educator, diplomat and civil rights activist. This event was hosted by the New York City Bar Association.

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The Civil War Battle of Chancellorsville was fought April 30 to May 6, 1863, in Spotsylvania County, Virginia. Many historians consider the battle to be Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s greatest victory. Facing a Union Army more than twice the size of his own, Lee divided his forces, sending 27,000 men under “Stonewall” Jackson on a 12-mile march to deliver a flank attack. In this program, we follow two National Park Service historians on a tour as they walk the same ground exactly 150 years after Jackson launched his attack.

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Author Graham Hodges looks at New York City’s cartmen, who hauled goods on one-horse carts and dominated the streets of the city from 1667 to 1850. He talks about how the cartmen developed deep relationships with the merchants and residents of New York City and came to be a part of the civic culture. The cartmen also came to hold political power and can be considered the forerunners of modern labor unions. The Gotham Center for New York City History hosted this event.

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University of Kansas professor Shawn Leigh Alexander teaches a class on the period following the end of slavery to the beginning of segregation. Professor Alexander discusses the failed Civil Rights Act of 1875, the Supreme Court ‘s 1896 “separate but equal” ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson, and African American journalist Ida B. Wells work to expose the horrors of lynching in the United States. The University of Kansas is in Lawrence.
 

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