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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Albany Law School professor Paul Finkelman talks about the practice of kidnapping freemen from the North and sending them South during the 19th century. He also discusses the wide-spread practice of renting slaves and how this tied non-slave owners to the slave system. Paul Finkelman has taught classes and written about the slave trade for many years. This interview took place at the Organization of American Historians meeting in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
 

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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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Vanderbilt University history professor Richard Blackett tells the stories of fugitive slaves, examining how they used the U.S. Mail to communicate with other slaves and how they planned and executed escapes to Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean. This event was hosted by Penn State University's Richards Civil War Era Center.

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Lucia Stanton, senior historian at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, has been studying and writing about Thomas Jefferson and his enslaved community for more than 30 years. In this program, she argues that the President sometimes treated his slaves as human beings and at other times as property. Using thousands of records kept by the third president, Stanton attempts to imagine what life was like from the point of view of the slaves. She is joined by historian Dianne Swann-Wright to discuss their ongoing oral history project that has collected the stories of over 170 descendants of Monticello’s slaves.

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50 years ago, on April 16, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” while being held in prison for his involvement in a city-wide civil rights protest called the Birmingham Campaign. King’s daughter, Bernice King, CEO of the King Center in Atlanta, joins Alabama’s governor, Birmingham’s Mayor and others for the unveiling of a historical marker aside the Birmingham Jail.

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This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Birmingham civil rights campaign. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his famed “Letter from Birmingham Jail” after being arrested for taking part in the protests. The campaign gained national attention after local officials used dogs and water cannons on kids after they took to the streets in what was known as the “Children’s Crusade.” A panel of authors and historians recall the turmoil of the time, as well as how Birmingham has chosen to remember its past. This event was part of the Alabama Historical Association’s annual conference.

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At the direction of Congress, the voices and experiences from the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-20^th century are being documented in an oral history project. This effort is a collaboration of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture, the Library of Congress and the Southern Oral History Program at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

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This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Birmingham Civil Rights Campaign in Alabama. The protests gained national attention after local officials used dogs and water cannons on kids after they took to the streets in what was known as the “Children’s Crusade.” This event features first-person accounts of the events in Birmingham that spring, including remarks by those who took part in the children’s protest, as well as student leaders of a boycott of segregated businesses. The discussion took place at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. 

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