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News, events, and press for Out of Virginia.

The Harvard Book Store window displaying university press titles around a Longleaf Services sign, with Out of Virginia by Joseph P. Stinnett in the upper right.

Harvard connections to Out of Virginia

By Joe Stinnett

Two of the first three Black doctors to attend Harvard University medical school later cared for the 1865 Lynchburg emigrants to Liberia, as I describe in Out of Virginia. So I was extra-pleased to see a photo of Out of Virginia in the…

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2026 MAAH Stone Book Award “Official Submission” graphic showing the cover of Out of Virginia beside a photograph of author Joseph P. Stinnett.

Nice recognition for the book

By Joe Stinnett

I was honored to see Out of Virginia: Black Americans' Search for Freedom in 19th-Century Liberia, as an official submission of the University of Virginia Press to the 2026 Museum of African American History's Stone Book Award judging.…

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Nineteenth-century engraving of the James River and Kanawha Canal in Lynchburg in the 1850s, with three figures standing on the canal bank, by David Hunter Strother (“Porte Crayon”).

A few hows and many whys

By Joe Stinnett

I've been asked how and why I wrote Out of Virginia: Black Americans' Search for Freedom in 19th Century. Here are two answers. How: patience, years of research, and many years of factual editing and reporting experience. Why: How could I…

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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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