Contact: James Carskadon

STARKVILLE, Miss.—A distinguished Civil War and Southern history scholar will give Mississippi State’s third annual Frank and Virginia Williams Lecture on Lincoln and Civil War Studies on Oct. 31.

William C. Davis, former executive director of the Virginia Center for Civil War Studies at Virginia Tech, will give his lecture titled “Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis as Chief Executives” at 2 p.m. in the John Grisham Room of Mitchell Memorial Library. The event, sponsored by MSU Libraries, is free and open to the public.

A Missouri native, Davis spent twenty years working in the magazine and book publishing industry before becoming a writer and consultant. He is the author or editor of more than 60 books in the fields of Civil War and Southern history and has served as a consultant and commentator for several historical television programs. He is the only four-time winner of the Jefferson Davis Award, given for book-length works in Confederate and Civil War history, among other professional accolades. He was a member of the advisory board for the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. In 2013, he retired after 13 years as professor of history and executive director of the Virginia Center for Civil War Studies.

The Williams Lecture on Lincoln and Civil War Studies was established in 2017 by former Rhode Island Supreme Court Chief Justice Frank Williams and his wife, Virginia. The couple established the lecture series for the university community and others to have a chance to reflect on Lincoln and the Civil War by bringing leading scholars to campus.

In addition to the lectureship, the Williamses gifted their extraordinary private Lincoln and Civil War collection amassed over the past 50 years to the university. The Frank J. and Virginia Williams Collection of Lincolniana boasts rare historical memorabilia; priceless artifacts; original, signed documents; ephemera; books published over a span of 150 years; and both original one-of-a-kind, and early mass-produced, artwork relating to Lincoln and the Civil War era.

The Williams Collection, located next to the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library, is now part of a state-of-the-art museum and gallery in Mitchell Memorial Library. The new exhibit space was unveiled with a grand opening in 2017, and has since drawn thousands of visitors to the library. For more, see http://library.msstate.edu/williamscollection/about/.

For more on the 2019 Williams Lecture on Lincoln and Civil War Studies, visit http://lib.msstate.edu/williamscollection/lecture/2019.

MSU is Mississippi’s leading university, available online at www.msstate.edu.