Featured Grants
When Janey Comes Marching Home
“When Janey Comes Marching Home:
Portraits of Women Combat Veterans”
Visual Arts Center of Richmond
$9,900 awarded June, 2008
When Janey Comes Marching Home: Portraits of Women Combat Veterans combines the work of photographer Sacha Pflaeging and author and filmmaker Laura Browder, a professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University and former VFH Fellow whose book Her Best Shot: Women and Guns in America (University of North Carolina Press, 2006) traces the way the female soldier has been seen in American popular culture.
Through a grant to the Visual Arts Center of Richmond, VFH has supported the collection of oral history interviews with several dozen women veterans together with photographic portraits of each of these women, leading to an exhibit at the Center and traveling to other locations in Virginia subsequently.
Legacy Museum of African American History
Deep in My Heart:
The Rise of Jim Crow in Central, Virginia, 1865-1954
Someday: The Fall of Jim Crow in Central Virginia, 1954-1980
$10,000, awarded December, 2004; $10,000, awarded December, 2005
Two grants from VFH have supported a pair of exhibits on the history and legacies of Jim Crow segregation in Central Virginia.
The first of the VFH-funded exhibits, entitled "Deep in My Heart," opened in June, 2005. It focuses on the legal structures that supported racial segregation and on segregation's impact on the lives of African Americans in the Lynchburg area. This story, of course, is not unique to Central Virginia, but by including photographs, documents, and other artifacts donated by members of the local community, the exhibit brings the experience of segregation "home," and the experience for visitors is extremely powerful.
The second exhibit is "Someday: The Fall of Jim Crow in Central Virginia, 1954-1980". It focuses on the local Civil Rights Movement, placing this experience in a national context. It covers the period from the Brown v. Board decision to the closing of Lynchburg’s all-black Dunbar High School twenty five years later.
Visit the Legacy Museum Website
Chickahominy Tribe
Tribal Brochure
$3,000 awarded March 2005
The VFH awarded a $3,000 grant to The Chickahominy Tribe in March of 2005 for the creation of a tribal history brochure. Using special funding from the NEH's We The People Initiative, VFH awarded several grants, including this one, for planning efforts related to the 2007 anniversary.
The Chickahominy tell their own story in the tribal history brochure, interpreting Indian history and culture with the participation of an 8-member History Committee and the Tribal Council.
Visit The Chickahominy Tribe's Website
Radford University
Women of Change, Women of Courage: Appalachian Activists
$10,000 awarded December 2005
The VFH awarded $10,000 to support an oral history project resulting in the development of a multi-media presentation on the contributions of Appalachian women devoted to fighting for change. Project Director Theresa Burriss, author and professor at Radford, has spent the last year traveling Central Appalachia interviewing women who are engaged in some form of activism. This project focuses on women who protest for change by taking a stand wherever necessary. An example is Judy Bonds, who for years has protested against mountain top removal in West Virginia. Burriss also focuses on women who advocate change through their writing, such as poet Marilou Awiakta.
- Listen to VFH-Radio Feature (4/2006)
*Right Click to Download MP3
The Rose Group
$10,000 awarded June, 2005
The China-America Festival of Film and Culture (October 5-9, 2005) broke new ground by using media and culture to present to American audiences the history, philosophy, and culture of a country that is increasingly important to the United States and Virginia in particular.
- Listen to VFH-Radio Feature (10/2005)
*Right Click to Download MP3 - Visit Rose Group Website
