back this break we will be with the final speaker of the day, elizabeth barron from the university of virginia. she will talk about elizabeth van loo, the unions by who operated a ring out of the confederate capital of richmond, virginia. but now c-span takes you on the road. benny: name a bridge after edmund pettis, certain things happen. first, you stamp a modern marvel with the name of someone who supported white supremacy for decades. he's a confederate hero. there is the sense that the past in the present have come together. you have a modern bridge with a name who was possibly a kkk leader and a key voice of white supremacy here in the south. bridge waspettus completed in 1940. the bridge replaced a much older and somewhat dysfunctional wooden bridge people had to click by hand if a ship was coming through of any height. it was meant to update the link between montgomery, the state capital, and the black belt here. it was pretty much people leaving the black belt to go to montgomery. the connection of the bridge is that many would come to the capital to seek political capital to

elizabeth barron, i do not know what became of her. [laughter] bring it up partly to kickoff. this book is about virginia, it is also about how women affected politics in multiple ways. and in symbols. that kind of scholarship affected me and was in my mind way back. i was working on philadelphia in readingl war and i kept newspapers and seeing stories about someone named anna dickenson. the papers i was reading resumed their audience knew who they were talking about. i had no idea who they were talking about. it took me a while to think about it. i finally discovered that anna dickinson was a philadelphia quaker, her father died when she was young. she had been an abolitionist. of the middle class and what happens when your patriarch dies. the family becomes poor middle class. she had a sister, three worthless brothers, and her mother. she ends up for much of her life supporting her entire family. , she was bornlife in october of 1842. where my students. down octobere 1842. keep that in mind. that is when she was born. howanuary of 1860 she is old? 17. she shows up at what is

and she published "the true aory of elizabeth van lew: union agent in the heart of the confederacy." liz barron. [applause] professor baron: i bring you greetings in virginia and i am delighted to tell you about a remarkable virginian. i wrote a biography of elizabeth .an lew as we approach the 200th anniversary of her birth, we are coming up on the anniversary, i find i am more fascinated by her than ever, in part because new details of her life come to light and we are more familiar with the phenomena and she represented, namely white southern union is some. so, it was clear to me from the start when i began researching than 20s life more years ago that she is in many ways a problematic subject for a biography. problem is the vast majority of americans had never heard of her. she was an utterly obscure figure. at the same time, among a civil war aficionados, folks like us, she was a mystical figure -- known, but cloaked in twice told tales. then finally, people in her native richmond, van lew has been a very polarizing figure. she is regarded as a heroine in some quarters in richmond, and to