MAPPING AND UNCOVERING AFRICAN AMERICAN HEIRITAGE IN CENTRAL VIRGINIA
OCAAHS ANNUAL MEETING: Sunday, February 16, 2025, 2:00 PM
ON VIEW: February 1 - 28, 2025
OCAAHS HERITAGE PROGRAM
2025 ANNUAL MEMBERSHIP MEETING
Celebrate Black History Month in our local community with a joint exhibition and program lead by the Orange County African American Historical Society in partnership with Historic Germanna and the Montpelier Descendants Committee. The program with start after a brief OCAAHS business meeting. Join us for an illuminating afternoon, February 16, featuring two groundbreaking research projects exploring African American history in our region.
Part 1: African and African-Descended Histories at Germanna
Kelly Arford-Horne, Archaeology Site Director, and Jennifer Hurst-Wender, Executive Director of Historic Germanna, will share discoveries about the Gordon family's remarkable journey from enslavement to freedom and their migration to Liberia. Learn about recent archaeological findings that reveal the daily lives of enslaved people at the Gordon Plantation site, and how this research expands our understanding of 19th-century African American experiences in Orange County.
Part 2: Roots to Routes - Black Heritage Across Nine Counties
George Monroe Jr., Executive Director of the Montpelier Descendants Committee, together with Dr. Andrea Roberts and her team from the UVA Center for Cultural Landscapes, will present their innovative digital mapping project. Discover how they're documenting historic Black spaces and connecting with descendant families around James Madison's Montpelier. Learn how you can contribute your own family stories to this growing digital archive of Black history.
EXHIBITING ORGANIZATIONS
ORANGE COUNTY AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORICAL SOCIETY
The Orange County African American Historical Society (OCAAHS) was founded in February 2000 with the mission to explore African American contributions to the cultural and historical heritage of Orange County, Virginia. The Society seeks to enhance and promote awareness of the accomplishments and contributions of people of African descent as organic and essential components of our community, and our nation, at large. Toward those ends, we endeavor to identify, research and preserve African American legacies, lore, and historical sites.
The Society works in close cooperation with the Orange County Historical Society, and we are grateful to that organization for sharing their facilities.
Learn more about the OCAAHS on their website: ocaahs.org
HISTORIC GERMANNA
Formerly the Germanna Foundation, they are now known as Historic Germanna to more effectively convey the depth and breadth of experiences available through this public history gem in Central Virginia. Historic Germanna is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that was originally chartered in 1956 to preserve the heritage of the earliest organized settlements of Germans in colonial Virginia in 1714 and 1717, augmented with additional infusions of immigrants in the 1730s and 1740s.
The organization’s history encompasses the lives of Indigenous peoples, English Colonists, descendants of early German immigrants, and African American communities. Through their varied programs, they serve multiple communities, including outdoor recreation and conservation, education, descendants and genealogy, archaeology, historic preservation, and tourism. Indeed, Historic Germanna provides many ways to experience little-known aspects of Virginia’s history.
Learn more about Historic Germanna on their website: germanna.org
MONTPELIER DESCENDANTS COMMITTEE
The Montpelier Descendants Committee (MDC) is the first independent, descendant-led organization to establish itself as an equal co-steward of a major historic site in America. The MDC is devoted to restoring the narratives of enslaved Americans at plantation sites in Central Virginia, including but not limited to James Madison’s Montpelier, from the margins to the center of historical discourse. The MDC promotes a more accurate understanding of the lives of enslaved people based on broader, richer and more truthful interpretations of American history. Through a series of public programs, events, research, and communications the MDC seeks to demonstrate how the lives of enslaved persons made possible and informed the ideals of universal liberty enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, yet denied to them.
Learn more about MDC on their website: montpelierdescendants.org
This exhibition is supported in part by the Virginia Commission for the Arts, which receives support from the Virginia General Assembly and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.
