ASALH Virtual

Join us September 23–27, 2026, in Hampton Roads, hosted in Norfolk, Virginia, at the Norfolk Waterside Marriott.

This year’s theme, “100: A Century of Black History Commemorations,” offers a powerful opportunity to reflect on the long legacy of documenting, preserving, and advancing Black history.

Learn more and register: asalh.org/conference/

The W.E.B. DuBois Lecture ASALH Northern VA Branch Presents: Dr. Thavolia Glymph - Unofficial Hostilities: An Arithmetic of Freedom’s Making
Historians have captured in great detail the toll the Civil War took, especially in human life, and explored in rich detail the unevenness of freedom’s arrival, its precariousness and protracted nature. Less visible and accounted for in the scholarship is the war’s impact on the lives of Black women and children. This talk addresses this crucial, largely missing aspect of the war and its legacy.

Thavolia Glymph is one of the leading historians of 19th-century U.S. history, especially slavery, the Civil War, and African American women’s experiences. She is a professor at Duke University and served as the first Black woman president of the American Historical Association.

Her scholarship sits at the intersection of:

Slavery and emancipation
Gender and power
African American history
War and society (especially the Civil War)

Think of her work as shifting the lens: instead of focusing primarily on generals, battles, and political leaders, she centers households, women, and enslaved people as active historical agents.

Event Details:
Lunch: 12:00pm-1:15pm
Lecture: 1:30pm-2:45pm

https://aaas.gmu.edu/events/18121

Baltimore Mayor Brandon M. Scott has been sworn in as president of the board of trustees for the African American Mayors Association for the 2026–27 fiscal year.

The ceremony took place during the organization’s 12th annual conference in Washington, D.C. Scott previously served as the group’s first vice president and succeeds Van R. Johnson II, of Savannah, Georgia.

The work of history is the work of healing.

ASALH proudly recognizes Dr. Chadra Pittman, a member of our Executive Council, as keynote speaker for the Black Lavender Collective’s Healing Symposium at UMass Amherst AfroAm

Her scholarship and public engagement embody ASALH’s mission: to promote, research, preserve, interpret, and disseminate information about Black life, history, and culture.

We celebrate this continued work to make Black feminist thought legible, lived, and lasting.

ASALH: Association for the Study of African American Life and History