Lynn Rainville's guest appearances

Lynn Rainville

Virginia Historical Society Podcasts

Research at the National Archives and Beyond

James Madison

Maurie D. McInnis

David Lynch

Douglas Brinkley

Woodrow Wilson

Robert E. Lee

Dred Scott

Cokie Roberts

Jeremy Black

Patrick Henry

Gloria Lucas

Rob Brown

Louis Brandeis

John Brown

John Grady

OwlTail

Lynn Rainville is the Acting Dean of Sweet Briar College, where she also directs the Tusculum Institute for Public History. Although her PhD is in Near Eastern archaeology, she has spent the last two decades studying historic American cemeteries, segregated schools, enslaved communities, poor farms, and World War I. She is the author of several books, includingthe recently released Virginia and the Great War (2018), Hidden History: African American Cemeteries in Central Virginia (2014), and the forthcoming book, Invisible Founders: How Two Centuries of African American Labor Transformed a Plantation into a College (2019). For more information: www.lynnrainville.org.

Lynn Rainville is the Acting Dean of Sweet Briar College, where she also directs the Tusculum Institute for Public History. Although her PhD is in Near Eastern archaeology, she has spent the last two decades studying historic American cemeteries, segregated schools, enslaved communities, poor farms, and World War I. She is the author of several books, includingthe recently released Virginia and the Great War (2018), Hidden History: African American Cemeteries in Central Virginia (2014), and the forthcoming book, Invisible Founders: How Two Centuries of African American Labor Transformed a Plantation into a College (2019). For more information: <a href="http://www.lynnrainville.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.lynnrainville.org</a>.

Hidden History: African American Cemeteries in Central Virginia - Lynn Rainville

On February 22, 2018, Lynn Rainville delivered a Banner Lecture entitled “Doing Their Bit: The Surprising Role of Virginians in the Great War.” In this illustrated lecture, Lynn Rainville revealed the crucial roles that Virginians played in the Great War. These individuals ranged from drafted soldiers to politicians (including Staunton native, Woodrow Wilson) and from locally born horses to their ferriers. These patriots also included female stenographers, African American doctors, domestic gardeners, National Guard troops, and army chaplains. Of these hundreds of thousands of volunteers, more than 3,600 lost their lives as a direct result of the war, impacting families throughout the state. And yet many of their sacrifices have been forgotten. Rainville concluded her talk with a study of statues erected in Virginia after the war to reveal a more complete story of service and sacrifice during the Great War. Dr. Lynn Rainville is a research professor in the humanities at Sweet Briar College and a fellow at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. She is the author of "Hidden History: African American Cemeteries in Central Virginia" and "Virginia and the Great War: Mobilization, Supply and Combat, 1914–1919."

Doing Their Bit: The Surprising Role of Virginians in the Great War by Lynn Rainville

On October 8 at noon, Lynn Rainville delivered a Banner Lecture entitled “God’s Acre: Why African American Cemeteries Matter.” In Hidden History, Lynn Rainville travels through the forgotten African American cemeteries of central Virginia to recover information crucial to the stories of the black families who lived and worked there for more than two hundred years. The subjects of Rainville’s research are not statesmen or plantation elites; they are hidden residents, people who are typically underrepresented in historical research but whose stories are essential for a complete understanding of our national past. Rainville studied above-ground funerary remains in more than 150 historic African American cemeteries in Virginia to provide an overview of mortuary and funerary practices from the late eighteenth century to the end of the twentieth. Combining historical, anthropological, and archaeological perspectives, she analyzes documents—such as wills, obituaries, and letters—as well as gravestones and graveside offerings. Rainville’s findings shed light on family genealogies, the rise and fall of segregation, and attitudes toward religion and death. As many of these cemeteries are either endangered or already destroyed, the book and this talk will include a discussion about the challenges of preservation and how Virginians may visit, and help preserve, these valuable cultural assets. Lynn Rainville is a research professor in the humanities and the founding director of the Tusculum Institute for local history, located at Sweet Briar College. Her most recent book is Hidden History: African American Cemeteries in Central Virginia

God’s Acre: Why African American Cemeteries Matter by Lynn Rainville