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Title page of the third and last edition of Walker’s Appeal, in Four Articles; Together with a Preamble, to the Coloured Citizens of the World, written in Boston by David Walker, 1830.

Thomas Jefferson and July 4

By Joe Stinnett

Despite sending mixed messages on slavery, Thomas Jefferson, third president of the U.S. and author of the Declaration of Independence, could not maintain his Monticello lifestyle without it and owned a second slave plantation surrounding…

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Flyer from the Legacy Museum in Lynchburg listing local Juneteenth activities and events.

Juneteenth

By Joe Stinnett

Juneteenth should resonate in Lynchburg, because the city was founded by Quakers who owned slaves but freed them in the 1780s when the faith banned enslavers from membership. Some of the former Quakers here soon became Methodists, who…

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Brownsburg Museum exhibit panel titled “Afrika — From Brownsburg to Liberia,” with William Halliburton’s 1866 letter, a map of the 4,788-mile journey, and the words “These people matter to me.”

The Brownsburg Museum

By Joe Stinnett

The Brownsburg Museum is a small museum in tiny Brownsburg, Virginia, a historic community near Raphine in the Shenandoah Valley. I was invited for a private tour and it is world-class. I was blown away by the quality of the displays and…

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About 30 members of the BG Hilltrippers hiking group posing together under the timber-frame Shelter No. 1 at Holliday Lake State Park, one holding a cake.

Hiker Lunch

By Joe Stinnett

I hosted a cookout lunch for my hiking group, the BG Hilltrippers, at Holliday Lake State Park in Appomattox County, to thank them for all their interest and support for my Liberia project over the years I’ve been working on it and talking…

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