OAH Distinguished Lecturer Profile
William G. Thomas III is the John and Catherine Angle Professor in the Humanities at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is the author of "A Question of Freedom: The Families Who Challenged Slavery from the Nation's Founding to the Civil War" (2020). He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a Lincoln Prize Finalist. He was a co-founder and director of the Virginia Center for Digital History at the University of Virginia. He is currently producing a series of animated historical films at Animating History.
In November 1815, an enslaved woman from Prince George's County leapt from the third-floor window of the slave jail at George Miller’s F Street tavern in Washington, D.C. This 11 minute award-winning film reconstructs her story based on the available documentary evidence. Thomas co-produced "Anna." In a brief lecture he discusses the making of the film and the current scholarship of slavery and freedom-making in U.S. history. For a preview, go to "Anna."