The Roanoke History & O. Winston Link Museums announce “History is Served,” its annual fundraising event at the Hotel Roanoke, 110 Shenandoah Ave NE, Roanoke, Virginia, on Thursday, September 18, 2025. Nationally recognized and bestselling author Andrew Lawler will speak on his newest book, A Perfect Frenzy: A Royal Governor, His Black Allies, and the Crisis that Spurred the American Revolution.
As the American Revolution broke out in New England in the spring of 1775, dramatic events unfolded far to the south that proved every bit as decisive as the battles of Lexington and Concord in uniting the colonies against Britain. Virginia, the largest, wealthiest, and most populous province in British North America, was governed by Lord Dunmore, a pugnacious Scottish earl. Outgunned and outmanned, he allied with the colony’s enslaved Africans, who made up two of every five Virginians and were eager to gain their freedom. Dunmore emancipated those who would fight for King George III and sent them into battle against their patriot owners as part of the first corps of Black soldiers in American history. The crisis that gripped Virginia in 1775 and 1776 has long been relegated to the background by historians, in part because it is the story of two liberty-seeking groups of Americans fighting against one another. Chronicling these stunning and widely overlooked events in full for the first time, A Perfect Frenzy offers a striking new perspective on the American Revolution that reorients our understanding of its causes, highlights the radically different motivations between patriots in the North and South, and reveals the seeds of the nation’s racial divide.
Lawler, an award winning journalist, has written four books, including prize winning Under Jerusalem: The Buried History of the World’s Most Contested City, as well as the bestseller The Secret Token: Myth, Obsession, and the Search for the Lost Colony of Roanoke. He regularly contributes to The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Geographic, Smithsonian, and Archaeology Magazines.
The “History Is Served” evening includes a cash bar reception at 5:30, a sit-down dinner at 7, silent and live auctions, lecture from Mr. Lawler, as well as a book signing. Tickets are $125 per person, or for a sponsor table of 10, $1500. Sponsorship tables include 10 tickets, valet parking, two drink tickets, and Society memberships. For $2000, a group of eight can join Mr. Lawler at his table for dinner. Tickets are available online at www.roanokehistory.org, over the phone at 540.982.5465, or stop by the museum located at 101 Shenandoah Ave NE, Roanoke, Virginia, to purchase.
This dinner is the Society’s major fundraising event, and its proceeds enable the museums to offer exhibits, to provide meaningful educational outreach and in-museum programming, as well as to support its vast collections representing the history and material culture of the Greater Roanoke Valley.