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Author: Sarah Thomas

Rising and Falling Families: Reframing Race and Capitalism in Virginia’s New South

By Derek Vouri-Richard, 2021-2022 American Studies Graduate Assistant

My exhibit, Rising and Falling Families: Reframing Race and Capitalism in Virginia’s New South looks at different Virginia families from the New South to interrogate the relationship between economic changes and racial dynamics in Virginia after the Civil War and Reconstruction period. During this period Southern markets incorporated into a developing national economy through creating new institutions, laws, and business relations. These changes affected families in different ways. Often, the relationship between New South families and the larger social context differed based on race. As Virginia modernized, Black people and organizations entered a growing political economy in which White families had built infrastructures of wealth and power across generations. Around the turn of the century, Black businesses, colleges, and families became the institutions through which Black citizens entered the free market and challenged historical ideologies embedded within the economy.   

Rising and Falling Families analyzes four historical events from Virginia’s New South economy, with a specific eye on the people and families involved in shaping these events. The first section of the exhibit analyzes the formation of the Jamestown Exposition Company in 1902 by men of the Old South aristocracy. The second section looks at the 1907 Jamestown Exposition, which celebrated the 300th anniversary of the English settlement of Jamestown. In the third section, the exhibit considers the rise of a new social class of business owners in the New South by illuminating Samuel Harris of Williamsburg, Va. and Edward L. Stone of Roanoke Va. The exhibit’s final section explores Williamsburg’s twentieth-century Black business district by foregrounding one of the families who were crucial to developing this economic region, the Webb-Williams family.

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What does it mean to construct an archaeological database?  

By Caroline Watson, Anthropology Graduate Assistant, 2019-present

Database is a bodiless concept, recognizable to many but whose boundaries are difficult to define. Most broadly, our minds and memories are databases that constantly update, however imperfectly, as we see, read, and experience new things. In the scholarly sense, databases are paper or digital places that store key details of a person, object, location, or event. Both of these definitions underscore that databases are sources of information and a central home to multiple types of data that derive from other, diverse sources. Recognizing the form and function of databases is indeed a first step in learning how to think about them critically.  

Caroline Watson and the in-progress database

One labor of love The Lemon Project is currently undertaking is the construction of an archaeological database, which I am helping to design as part of my graduate research fellowship. This database will host information relating to the findings from archaeological excavations that have taken place on William & Mary’s campus since the 1930s. In other words, it will be a lengthy and descriptive list of artifacts that have been found on campus. Unfortunately, it is next to impossible to populate this database with every individual artifact that has been unearthed over the past almost century. Norms and regulations surrounding both artifact documentation and preservation of excavation forms have changed over the decades, thankfully now holding archaeologists more accountable for their work. To this end, the task of tracking down the artifact inventories that are dispersed throughout different archaeological companies and organizations has been a challenge in itself and is still ongoing. William & Mary itself houses archaeological and documentary collections that are independent from collections that reside in specific departments, making it all the more complicated to round up and access these data. Once I obtain artifact inventories from archaeological reports, I face the difficulty of standardizing this information into our own database-specific categories. This requires the creation of a standardized system of codes and categories that I will apply to all artifact entries. It is important to recognize the role personal judgment plays here. These codes and categories directly determine the type of information we are extracting from each artifact, and thus the extent of future knowledge about that object. If I decided to label every pottery sherd (not shard!) as simply ceramic, I would miss the crucial distinctions between styles like stoneware, pearlware, and Chinese porcelain, which each have their own temporal and geographic implications. Alternatively, recording every possible detail of an artifact may paralyze the progress of database construction and result in a mass of data that is not necessarily useful to anyone. Navigating this fine line is my current job as someone designing the database. My approach has been to think critically about what details of artifacts are most relevant and can answer the widest variety of research questions, now and in the future. Certainly, The Lemon Project intends for this database to not only spotlight that William & Mary has its own archaeological collections, but also engage future archaeological research projects that highlight the presence of enslaved peoples on campus and focus on the materiality of enslaved life ways and experiences.

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Meet Derek Vouri-Richard, LP American Studies Graduate Assistant

By Derek Vouri-Richard, 2021-2022 American Studies Graduate Assistant

I am a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies at William & Mary. My areas of specialization are media studies, visual culture studies, cultural studies, film studies, the history of American capitalism, and the history of American media. My research looks at the ways in which American businesses were developing new forms of literacy and visual learning in the first half of the twentieth century. My research and areas of specialization relate to the Lemon Project in that I am interested in the ways in which developing market relations intersect with cultural dynamics such as race and gender. My role in the Lemon Project involves researching with documents that reveal enslaved people who were associated with the college from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth century. These documents come from sources connected to William & Mary and sources outside the college. William & Mary documents that have helped the Lemon Project better understand the ways in which slavery has shaped the college’s history include bursar account records, faculty minutes books, former president’s account books, and ephemeral material such as a list of slaves owned by the college from the eighteenth century. Sources outside of William & Mary that have contributed to the Lemon Project research include the Bruton Parish Church, the Virginia Gazette, the William and Mary Quarterly, and the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography. Through accumulating these sources the Lemon Project hopes to build a comprehensive database that will facilitate ongoing knowledge about the history of race and slavery at William & Mary and in Williamsburg.

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Join us for the 12th Annual Lemon Project Spring Symposium- The Time is Now: The Lives of Black Men Past, Present, and Future

By Dr. Sarah Thomas, Lemon Project Associate Director

A Twitter Graphic Shared with Our Call for Proposals

The Lemon Project team is busy preparing for our upcoming Symposium—it’s less than two weeks away! This will be an in-person and virtual event and our first in-person event during the COVID era. We are looking forward to coming together around the theme, “The Time is Now: The Lives of Black Men Past, Present, and Future.” Registration is free, and we will be providing breakfast and lunch on March 25 and March 26.

Why are we focusing on the lives of Black men?

The following is excerpted from the Call for Proposals, written by Dr. Jajuan Johnson, our Mellon Postdoctoral Research Associate. “The lives of Black men are valuable. The purpose of this symposium is to center the realities of Black men past and present while imagining future possibilities. In the words of Black Male Studies scholar T. Hasan Johnson, we plan to “delve into the lives of Black males beyond stereotypes, conjecture, and opinion.” 

“The symposium prompts us to pause and listen to the stories of Black men across time, age, class, region, and sexuality. Given the historical marginalization of Black males and the evident atrocities over the past decade with the violent deaths of Black men and boys, there is an urgency to lean into the humanity of Black men and imagine a future where they (we) can thrive in all realms of life.”

Dr. Jajuan Johnson, Call for Proposals, 12th Annual Lemon Project Spring Symposium

Keynotes by Tommy Curry & Kiese Laymon

Dr. Tommy Curry and Kiese Laymon are joining us in Williamsburg for keynote talks—Dr. Curry on March 25 at 6 pm ET and Mr. Laymon on March 26 at 9:00 am ET. After each of their keynotes, Dr. Curry and Mr. Laymon will be signing books, which you can purchase from the William & Mary Bookstore on site.

Plenary Session—The Time is Now: The Lives of Black Men

Dr. Daniel Black, Dr. T. Hasan Johnson, and Dr. O’Shan Gadsden will serve as panelists for the plenary session, “The Time is Now: The Lives of Black Men Past, Present, and Future,” on the morning of Friday, March 25. Dr. Jamel Donnor, of the William & Mary School of Education, will be the moderator. Dr. Jajuan Johnson notes that “the panelists bring various perspectives with backgrounds in Black Male Studies, psychology, and Africana Studies. They will present facts challenging enduring stereotypes that dehumanize Black men and boys, offer insight on present inequities, and discuss ways Black men are transforming themselves and their communities. Lastly, they will provide visions that improve the lives of Black males based on their areas of expertise.”

One of 2021’s Symposium panels, featuring students who made art to remember people enslaved by William & Mary

Future of Ethnic Studies

On March 25 at noon, the Asian Centennial and the Lemon Project join together for a panel discussion on Ethnic Studies in Virginia. During this year of celebrating the accomplishments of the first Asian students at William & Mary, we also look forward to a more inclusive future. Our panelists are Monika Gosin, Krystyn Moon (from the University of Mary Washington), Laura Guerrero, Steve Prince, and Chinua Thelwell.

Interdisciplinary and Multi-disciplinary Panels

In addition to the keynotes, plenary session, and the Ethnic Studies panel, there are 11 panels on a variety of topics given by presenters who are community members, scholars, researchers, genealogists, working professionals, and students. From folks sharing their genealogy and family histories to students sharing their summer research and discussions of Black professionals in the corporate world to cell phone videos and police violence, these panels are real, timely, and offer a roadmap of where Black males have been, where they are now, and what the future could hold.

Everyone is welcome! Registration is free, and we’re providing breakfast and lunch for in-person attendees on March 25 and March 26.

As always, everyone is welcome to attend. Please share the Symposium with your friends, family, and anyone else who might be interested in this two-day multi-disciplinary conversation about Black men past, present, and future.

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Get to know the Lemon Project Anthropology Graduate Assistant

By Caroline Watson, Anthropology Graduate Assistant, 2019-present

Receiving the Lemon Project research fellowship in Fall 2019 was one of the reasons I was most excited to attend William & Mary as an incoming master’s student in archaeology. At that time, I couldn’t have predicted that I’d be continuing with the Lemon Project team 3 years later as a doctorate student! Although my Ph.D. research is focused on pre-contact chiefdoms in French Polynesia (think 14th to 18th century), I was equally eager to dive into a project that highlighted the archaeology of the more recent past, especially that of the university and community into which I was entering. Since my very first day working with the Lemon Project team, I have never thought of my work as simply fulfilling the requirements for my fellowship. Rather, I am deeply engaged in and committed to the Lemon Project’s goals of broadening our knowledge of William & Mary’s history with slavery as well as using this research to build a safer, more inclusive community within the university and beyond. 

As an archaeologist, I am tasked with the attempt to understand William & Mary’s history of slavery through a material lens. While archaeologists certainly utilize the archival record, what sets us apart from other disciplines is our attention to the materiality of history—the objects, architecture, and even soil stains that people leave behind. A place like William & Mary has never really been abandoned. For one, indigenous peoples resided in this space long before the College’s formation in 1693, and even the brief hiatus in an academic administrative presence during the Civil War still saw an active occupation of the campus landscape (Higgins III 2014: 15). Nevertheless, while many buildings remain grounded in the same location, the areas in between them have been constantly renovated and re-designed over the years, through renovation and landscaping projects. The Sunken Gardens, for instance, were not constructed until 1935, which raises questions about what occupied that area before all that earth was moved. All of this makes it pretty difficult to get a direct “snapshot” of what campus looked like during the years it was engaged in the practice of slavery, since we have to peel back several layers of these physical changes. 

Documentation of archaeological work performed on campus since the 1930s helps us get closer to the material and architectural history of 18th and 19th century William & Mary, in the hopes of gaining a fuller understanding of the context in which enslaved peoples worked and lived here. Thus, my principal work as the Lemon Project Anthropology Graduate Fellow is to work directly with these documents and build a database that stores their information and makes this material history accessible to all. Stay tuned for more detail about this database! 

Sources Cited:
Higgins III, T.F. (2014). The Civil War at William and Mary: Archaeological Data Recovery in the Brafferton and Wren Yards, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA. William and Mary Center for Archaeological Research. WMCAR Project No. 12-19.

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Training Future History Makers: Lemon’s Learners 2021 Summer Camp

Lemon’s Learners Video, produced by the Studio of Teaching and Learning’s Roy Peterson and Sabrina Schaeffer

By Jajuan Johnson, Ph.D., Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow

In partnership with James Blair Middle School, the Lemon Project guided over a dozen students in genealogical research and exploring African American history in the Historic Triangle area. The camp, held July 13 – 15, 2021, had the theme “Black History Matters.” One of the main goals of the camp was for students to have a tangible experience with history through interaction with primary sources, family stories, and scientific experimentation.  

The camp kicked off with students participating in a DNA experiment using strawberries led by William & Mary’s Biology department professor Dr. Shanta’ Hinton and her laboratory graduate students. Archivists from Special Collections at William & Mary’s Swem Library brought history alive with a mix of 18th and 19th-century photos, documents, and books at exhibit stations.

Genealogical research was a significant component of the camp. The learners received two days of intense training on the importance of genealogical research, ways to find documents on databases, such as Ancestry.com, and tips on interviewing family members. An essential partner in the process of family history instruction was Williamsburg Regional Library. WRL’s Reference Librarian Rachel Nelson guided students in accessing the research databases and discussed other resources available at the library, such as library hot spots and telescopes.

The camp culminated with a special showcase of their family history research projects. There are so many beautiful highlights to write about, but we encourage you to check out the video below to hear and see firsthand the transformative experiences of our learners. We are looking for hosting future summer programs where students will have the opportunity to spend time on our historic campus.

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