Name: Book Talk With Jody Lynn Allen | Roses in December
Start: 2025-10-15T12:00:00-04:00
End: 2025-10-15T13:00:00-04:00
Location: 800 East Broad Street, Richmond, VA, United States, Virginia 23219

PLEASE NOTE - THIS EVENT HAS BEEN RESCHEDULED FROM MAY 29. All registrations remain in place.
Book Talk With Jody Lynn Allen | Roses in December
Wednesday, October 15, 2025 | 12:00pm - 1:00pm
Library of Virginia Conference Rooms
This event is free and open to the public. Register at https://lva-virginia.libcal.com/event/14479752
Limited free parking is available underneath the Library at 800 East Broad Street, Richmond, VA
Join us at the Library for a talk by historian Jody Lynn Allen on her new book, “Roses in December: Black Life in Hanover County from Civil War to Civil Rights,” the inspiring chronicle of a Black community in Virginia fighting for civil rights over the course of a pivotal century.
“Roses in December” presents a story of strength, courage and beauty found in difficult times and the most challenging of circumstances. Beginning in the era of Reconstruction and ending with desegregation, Allen chronicles the lives of newly freed people and their descendants in Hanover County, providing an unprecedented look at rural Black Virginians’ resilience after disfranchisement. In the century between 1865 and 1965, Black residents of Hanover County embraced liberty as they organized for education, employment and religious freedom, and built a community that flourished in the face of white retrenchment and day-to-day oppression. The book’s attention to local, community-level history offers an overlooked yet vital perspective of the Civil Rights Movement in the rural South.
A book signing will follow the talk. Jody Lynn Allen is an assistant professor of history and the Robert Francis Engs Director of the Lemon Project at William & Mary.
For more information, contact [email protected].