February Book Talks Feature America’s Presidents As Authors And The Civil War
Press Release · Friday, January 31, 2020

Washington, DC

Noontime author talks and book signings at the National Archives in February feature author talks on topics including America’s Presidents and their books; unsolved civil rights era murders;  and white supremacy in the 1890s. Each program will be followed by a book signing.

These programs are free and open to the public and will be held at noon in the William G. McGowan Theater of the National Archives Museum in Washington, DC. Attendees should use the Special Events entrance on Constitution Avenue at Seventh Street, NW. Metro accessible on the Yellow and Green lines, Archives/Navy Memorial/Penn Quarter station. Reservations are recommended and can be made online. For those without reservations, seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. The theater doors will open 45 minutes prior to the start of the program. Late seating will not be permitted 20 minutes after the program begins.

BOOK TALK & SIGNING: Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy
Monday, February 3
Reserve a seat; watch the live stream on our YouTube Channel
By the 1890s, Wilmington was North Carolina’s largest city and a shining example of a mixed-race community with a burgeoning African American middle class. In 1898, North Carolina’s white supremacist Democrats were plotting to take back the state legislature in November “by the ballot or bullet or both.” In Wilmington’s Lie, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist David Zucchino tells the story of intimidation and violence, stuffed ballot boxes, and thousands of armed men who killed at least 60 black men in the streets. This brutal insurrection is a rare instance of a violent overthrow of an elected government in the U.S.

Author in Chief: The Untold Story of Our Presidents and the Books They Wrote
Wednesday, February 12
Reserve a seat; watch the live stream on our YouTube Channel
Craig Fehrman’s Author in Chief is the story of America’s Presidents and their books. From Calvin Coolidge’s Autobiography to Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father, Fehrman unearths countless insights about the Presidents through their literary works.

Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era
Tuesday, February 18
Reserve a seat; watch the live stream on our YouTube Channel
Investigative journalist Jerry Mitchell takes readers on the twisting road that led to the reopening of four of the most infamous killings during the civil rights movement. His work played a central role in bringing killers to justice for the assassination of Medgar Evers, the firebombing of Vernon Dahmer, the 16th Street Church bombing in Birmingham, and the Mississippi Burning case. 

Congress at War: How Republican Reformers Fought the Civil War, Defied Lincoln, Ended Slavery, and Remade America
Tuesday, February 25
Reserve a seat; watch the live stream on our YouTube Channel
In Congress at War, Fergus Bordewich shows how a newly empowered Republican Party shaped one of the most dynamic and consequential periods in American history. From reinventing the nation’s financial system to pushing President Lincoln to emancipate the slaves to the planning for Reconstruction, Congress undertook drastic measures to defeat the Confederacy, and in the process laid the foundation for a strong central government.