We are pleased to announce that our 176th Annual Membership Meeting will be presented virtually, Wednesday, June 4, 2025, 5:00 pm CT/6:00 pm ET.

The Davies Manor, a historic site near Memphis, was once a sprawling cotton plantation. Relying upon an extensive archive of primary sources, including nineteenth-century legal records, the personal papers of the Davies family, and twentieth-century African American oral histories, Andrew C. Ross uncovered stories that had been omitted from the public interpretation. He will discuss the engrossing bottom-up history of the Davies family, of the Black families they enslaved, and of Memphis and Shelby County.

Speaker Andrew C. Ross, formerly served as the projects director and executive director for the Davies Manor Historic Site. He later worked as museum director for the Blues Foundation’s Blues Hall of Fame Museum in Memphis. He is currently the director of exhibitions for Humanities Texas. His book The Realms of Oblivion: An Excavation of the Davies Manor Historic Site’s Omitted Stories received the 2024 Tennessee History Book Award.