WCVE Forum November 20: A History of Thanksgiving
When we sit down to Thanksgiving dinner, do we know what we’re commemorating? On this BackStory, the History Guys search for the roots of Thanksgiving. They discover that the holiday we celebrate today begins with the Victorians, who in the midst of the Civil War, sought a holiday honoring home and family. Did Thanksgiving strengthen the Union, as its proponents had hoped? What relation do Indians have to the holiday in reality and in myth? And what does football have to do with it? These are some of the questions on the table as BackStory digs into an American classic.
Join WCVE Public Radio for WCVE Forum, Sunday at 6:00 p.m.
Meet The BackStory Guys
Peter Onuf (18th Century Guy) is the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor of History at the University of Virginia and the author/editor of eleven books, including most recently, Nations, Markets, and War: Modern History and the American Civil War.
Ed Ayers (19th Century Guy) is President of the University of Richmond. Previously, he served as Hugh P. Kelly Professor of History and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia. The author/editor of ten books (including the Bancroft Prize-winning In the Presence of Mine Enemies), Ed also directed the online history project The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War.
Brian Balogh (20th Century Guy) is a Professor of History at the University of Virginia and Director of the Fellowship Program at Governing America in a Global Era Program at UVA’s Miller Center of Public Affairs. His third book, A Government Out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in Nineteenth-Century America, was published in 2009.
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