Bobbi Bowman was the guest speaker at the recent AAHGS-DC meeting. Bobbi is a retired newspaper editor who grew up in Washington, DC and now lives in Fairfax County, Va. Her family has lived in Virginia since the late 1790’s.
She stumbled across her deep Virginia roots one day in the Campbell County Virginia courthouse. There, she found a heart-breaking court case involving her great-great-grandfather.
As a retired Washington Post reporter and editor, she knows that county courthouses brim with old documents with stories to tell. She is an award-winning reporter and editor who worked at The Washington Post, the Detroit Free Press and USA TODAY. After a 40-year career, she was inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame in 2019. She also received the prestigious Ida B. Wells award for her work in diversifying newsrooms. She’s now a graduate student in history at George Mason University.
She knows the context and origins of much of Virginia’s ugliest history. She has combined her journalism skills with her graduate school knowledge to unearth the story of how her Black family survived Virginia from 1806 to the present.
You can view her presentation on our YouTube page
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Thank you so much for the recording! I could not attend the meeting, so having the recording was the next best thing and I am so glad I took the time to watch it. I learned so much. Thank you Bobbi for sharing part of your family's story and the work involved in compiling it!
Kudos to @Lisa Bealand the team involved in getting the meeting recordings posted so quickly. Thank you!