The Virginia Museum of History & Culture (VMHC) is honored to announce The Emily Winfree Fellowship for African and African American History in Virginia. This new annual fellowship will promote the study and interpretation of Black history in Virginia and provide access to the VMHC’s vast collections. The inaugural Winfree Fellowship will be awarded in 2025.
Named for Emily Winfree (b., ca. 1834, d. 1919), one of thousands of Black Virginians who transitioned from bondage to freedom during the Reconstruction era, and who kept her family united through slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow, this fellowship is made possible by Jan Meck, Ph.D., co-author with Virginia Refo of the book The Life and Legacy of Enslaved Virginian Emily Winfree (The History Press). “I am honored to have been able to tell Emily Winfree’s story, but there are so many more stories of brave Black Virginians that must be uncovered” offered Meck. I hope that this new fellowship will allow other researchers to bring much more Black history to light.”
The VMHC holds a nationally significant collection of nearly nine million items, many of which concentrate on the late eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. Within these records, there is much information about the lives and contributions of African Americans to both Virginia and the United States at large. “The scope and depth of the VMHC’s collections is well-suited to support the Winfree Fellowship” said President & CEO Jamie Bosket. “This generous gift ensures that important histories of Black Virginians housed in manuscripts and other archival material become better known to current and future generations and help us further understand our rich but complicated national history.”
The Winfree Fellowship carries a stipend of $8,000 for a minimum of six weeks in residence at E. Claiborne Robins, Jr. Research Library at the VMHC. It will be awarded on the basis of the applicant’s scholarly qualifications, the merit of their proposal, and the appropriateness of their topic demonstrated by citation to specific sources in the VMHC collections. The deadline for applications is Friday, September 27, 2024. Learn more at VirginiaHistory.org/EmilyWinfreeFellowship.
