exhibition on babe ruth and he has given face to face talks on everyone from they will loanus munch to elmer elsworth. please welcome with a history of ira aldrich jim barber. [ applause ] >> again welcome toll the national portrait gallery. ira aldridge, we'll talk about a little bit right now and very appropriate for february's black history month. why ira aldridge? and with this face to face series we connect three different people throughout three consecutive months so that we began last month with pocahontas and this month is ira aldridge and the connection is, the thread back in 2007 the state of virginia celebrated or commemorated two huge anniversaries, one the -- the older one being the 400th anniversary of the founding of jamestown. and the second anniversary was the 200th anniversary of the birth of robert e. lee. and one of the hardest things for anyone to do, teachers, historians, you name it, is to give a sense of time. so think back 2300 years if you can to robert e. lee's era. and then another 200 years back to jamestown. and that's hard to do. if someone just says, oh, you know 400 y