THOUGHT
PROVOKING
Book a Distinguished Lecturer from the Organization of American Historians for your next event.
VMI Photo by - H. Lockwood McLaughlin
Virtual OAH Lectures Now Offered
OAH Distinguished Lecturers are scholars and storytellers, uniquely qualified to bring historical context to today’s most important issues. Invite one of our speakers to virtually engage with your community on any U. S. history topic by booking a recorded or live online webinar with Q&A.
We have come to depend on OAH for first-rate service, and you have never disappointed us.
Russ Heller, - Boise Public Schools and Idaho Council for History Education
Featured Lecturer
Barbara L. Tischler
Barbara L. Tischler is the author of numerous articles on American culture, the 1960s, and aspects of the anti–Vietnam War movement, along with An American Music (1986), Sights on the Sixties (1992), and Muhammad Ali: A Man of Many Voices (2015). She has also taught courses on the U.S. Constitution and U.S. history at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her most recent research and presentation interests include African-American history, the civil rights movement, and the discourse of enslaved people as a aspect of community, humanity, and resistance.
Featured Lecture
The Language of Enslaved People as Culture, Humanity, and Resistance
African-American history is critical to understanding the broader dynamic of American history and it is more important now than ever to understand the dynamic of slavery through the words and song of enslaved people. This lecture presents what used to be called "slave narratives" in the context of community and resistance to the South's "peculiar institution." The lecture includes excerpts from the narratives of enslaved and free people of color as well as spirituals and songs of resistance.
"My grandfather went to the folks who had owned our family and asked,'Do you have any documentation about our history during the slave days?'... The man at the door, who I have to assume was from the slaveholding side, said, 'Sure, we'll give it to you.' The man went into his house and came back with some papers in his hands.. He stood at the door, in front of my grandfather, and lit a match to the papers. ‘You want your history?' be said. 'Here it is... Take the ashes and get off my land.’ --- as recounted by Delores McQuinn, Virginia state delegate, to Smithsonian Magazine (2015). "
