Jeff Davis: A Warning From Navassa

September 09, 2025
12:00pm - 1:00pm

Dennis Patrick Halpin, Associate Professor of History at Virginia Tech will discuss his research on Navassa, an uninhabited island off the coast of Haiti. Beginning in the mid-19th century, a US-based company stole the island over Haiti’s objections using a recently passed law known as the Guano Islands Act. For the next forty years the company lured young, Black men to mine the island’s phosphatic reserves in slave-like conditions. One of these men was Jeff Davis (born Frederick Davis) who grew up in Wheeling. The experience scarred Davis. He risked his life to escape and resolved to warn others about the island and the abuses he endured.

Presenter Bio: Dennis Halpin is is an Associate Professor of History at Virginia Tech. His first book, "A Brotherhood of Liberty: Black Reconstruction and Its Legacies in Baltimore, 1865-1920," examined some of the nation’s first civil rights activists from the end of the Civil War until 1920. He is currently working on a book that tells the long history of Navassa Island through the lives of the men who worked there in the late nineteenth century.

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"Lunch With Books" is the library’s flagship program for adult patrons. These lunchtime programs feature authors, poets, musicians, historians, and more every Tuesday at noon. Bring lunch (to the Library Auditorium or your computer), feed your brain!