Provocative and Thoughtful: VPC Members Enjoy Virtual Event With Newsmaker of the Year Christy Coleman

By Julie Campbell, Immediate Past President and Contest Chair

“Her presentation really resonated for me.” “What a provocative, thoughtful talk —loved it.” “Absolutely wonderful presentation and worthy Newsmaker.”

So said attendees of VPC’s 􀀁rst-ever webinar on Sept. 18, which featured a thoughtful, multi-layered talk by our 2020 Newsmaker of the Year, Christy Coleman. The executive director of the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation gave us a framework— which, she explained, is sometimes frayed — to explore history, heritage, and memory. Needless to say, those interrelated topics have made their own headlines this year.

We honored Coleman for her distinguished, path-breaking career, including her former role as the CEO of the American Civil War Museum, which opened in Richmond in 2019, and for her advocacy of two underrepresented groups in the fields of history and museums: women and people of color. One of Time magazine’s 2018 “31 People Who Are Changing the South,” Coleman served as the co-chair of Richmond’s Monument Avenue Commission, which studied the Confederate monuments that this past summer became flashpoints.

Explaining her overall philosophy, Coleman said that “framing our narratives around untruths harms everyone.” Through her work at a variety of museums, she has brought together “diverse voices … to tell our shared heritage.” The American Civil War Museum is a notable example, being the product of a merger of two institutions, the Museum of the Confederacy and the American Civil War Center at Historic Tredegar. It tells that shared heritage through the voices of Blacks, whites, soldiers, civilians, women, men — all the Americans who lived through the Civil War.

“I love my country, warts and all,” Coleman said, advocating honesty as the best policy when discussing injustice. In short, “how we understand history changes over time,” and we should honor ideas, not people, for people are flawed.

In addition to detailing her prescriptions for studying and presenting history, Coleman told us of her recent work as a consultant to the Showtime miniseries The Good Lord Bird. (To read what actor and producer Ethan Hawke, who appears as abolitionist John Brown, said about Coleman’s contributions, see this interview in the October/November 2020 issue of Garden & Gun Magazine.)

Coleman also fits writing screenplays into a packed schedule that accommodates a daily, two-hour-plus, round-trip commute to the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation from her home in the Richmond area; a husband; and two kids, one of whom is starting college this year. When she reported that upon entering a period of intense writing, she alerts her husband so he knows that she’ll be disappearing into the story for a while — well, we understood.