Ana Edwards

Background

About Ana Edwards

I am a public historian living and working in Richmond, Virginia. My current position is Education Programs Manager at the American Civil War Museum, responsible for programs delivered to K-12 students and educators. A native of Los Angeles, California, I hold a bachelor of arts in Visual Arts from California State Polytechnic University at Pomona and a master of arts in History from Virginia Commonwealth University with a post-baccalaureate certificate in Public History. My husband, Phil Wilayto, and I are two of four co-founders of the Virginia Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality (2002). I chair the Defenders' Sacred Ground Historical Reclamation Project, founded in 2004 to promote the reclamation and memorialization of the African and African American history of Shockoe Bottom, once the epicenter of the U.S. domestic slave trade. I serve on the editorial board of The Virginia Defender newspaper which the group established in 2005 and Phil edits. I have 20 years experience in public speaking on the significance of Richmond, Virginia's history with slavery, the town's first African Burial Ground, Gabriel's Rebellion, 18th and 19th century Black life-free and enslaved-and early national history. My research interests include all of the preceding plus public memory, historic landscapes, nation-buiding, and the role of public history and community voice in the civic landscape, especially for embattled communities in the US and other countries. What makes me tick most, however, is sharing the history that I learn and using it to help others see the past and present a little more clearly and one another a little more compassionately. I am extremely comfortable traveling and have visited Mali, Senegal, Iran, Poland, Ireland, Norway. Thanks to my grandmothers, I sew. Thanks to one of my aunts and an amazing high school teacher, I speak French. Thanks to my parents and my uncle, I paint. Thanks to my parents, I read. I am interested in the world and can't keep up with all the places I'd like to visit and the things I'd like to do.