I’ll be on the road again soon with book talks in Loudoun, Fauquier and Fairfax counties. Please join me.

The first stop will be this Sunday, Aug. 12, at 2 p.m., when I’ll be the guest of the Lovettsville Historical Society for its monthly history lecture series. The talk will be at St. James United Church of Christ, 10 East Broad Way, Lovettsville.

In their website preview of my talk, the society says, “Virginians have long thought of themselves as above (lynching), but the story of the Commonwealth–and Loudoun—shows a different story. While two-thirds of Virginia cities and counties had no lynchings, some like Loudoun and Fauquier had more than one.” In fact, Loudoun had three lynchings, and I’ll talk about them as part of my presentation.

On Thursday, Aug. 23, at 6:30 p.m., I’ll return to Warrenton and the Fauquier History Museum at the Old Jail. When Erin Clark, executive director, invited me to a book-signing there in April, I wrote about how much it meant to me. I feel the same way this time, and I have already started revising my talk to include some of the latest developments. These include the opening of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Ala., and the inscriptions for two Fauquier lynching victims—Shedrick Thompson and Arthur Jordan—at that memorial. In addition, thanks to Fauquier residents Shawn Nicholls and Kirk Goolsby, I have learned a lot more about Jordan, and I hope to share some of that information on Aug. 23. It is interesting that my talk that night will be in the museum’s courtyard, the place where Jordan was abducted in 1880.

Finally, I am proud to be a part of the Honors College Colloquium at George Mason University in Fairfax. I will be there on Friday, Sept. 14, at 1:30 p.m. John Woolsey, one of the organizers, said the audience will include 200 to 300 freshmen who probably don’t know much about lynching in Virginia. I find that to be common experience, that audiences are surprised when they learn about lynching in Virginia. As the Lovettsville Historical Society said, it was more frequent than usually assumed and “one of the cruelest parts of Southern history.”