Adapted from a VTS announcement
Historian Robert W. Prichard and journalist Adrienne Terrell Washington will discuss the topic “African-Americans and Theological Students on Seminary Hill: Segregation or Collaboration?” at 7 p.m. February 20. The discussion is part of a Zabriskie Lecture Series focus on “Religion and the Civil War.”
The event begins with a reception at 7 p.m. in the Addison Academic Center’s Lettie Pate Evans Auditorium. The lecture is free, but requires registration.
VTS was about equally divided between students from the North and the South in the 1850s, and it welcomed seminarians from Liberia. The result was a serious debate about the institution of slavery that involved both the seminary and some of its neighbors. By 1862, the seminary property became the site of a Union hospital and a major employer of African-Americans.
Prichard is the seminary’s Arthur Lee Kinsolving Professor of Christianity in America and Instructor in Liturgy. He is the author or editor of nine books, including A History of the Episcopal Church (Morehouse 1991, 1999, 2014).
Washington is an award-winning journalist, columnist, and college professor. Her columns and editorials for The Washington Times and The Afro-American Newspapers focus on justice issues involving women, children, and minorities.
Image of VTS Taken between 1861 and 1869, courtesy Library of Congress
