Nicole Myers Turner, an expert in African-American history who will join VCU’s Department of History as a professor in fall 2016, will speak about her current book project, “Faith and Freedom: The Politics of Black Religious Institutions in Post-Emancipation Virginia.” Her research explores the ways in which Virginia’s free and freed people used their churches and religious educational institutions to define and fight for freedom in the late-19th century. Focusing on black churches in Petersburg and Southside Virginia, Turner shows how religious and political movements became tightly interwoven during the decades following emancipation.

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