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Juneteenth: The Destruction of Slavery in the Civil War
Sunday, December 5 | 5-6:30 pm
$15 members/$25 non-members
Over the course of four years, enslaved people worked to turn the Civil War into a freedom war. Slowly but surely, they pushed President Abraham Lincoln and his commanders in the field toward embracing emancipation as a war aim and to compel them to take the giant steps forward needed to abolish slavery once and for all. On June 19, 1865, the federal government finally met that objective, declaring slavery dead across the country. In this talk, we’ll learn how this momentous event marked a new birth of freedom—an occasion we now commemorate as Juneteenth.
Virtual Seminars: New Perspectives on American History
In conjunction with the exhibition, For America: Paintings from the National Academy of Design, we are offering a series of 90-minute live virtual seminars that explore American history and culture.
The seminars are led by Dr. Richard Bell, Professor of History at the University of Maryland and author of the book Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and their Astonishing Odyssey Home, a finalist for the George Washington Prize and the Harriet Tubman Prize. He has held research fellowships at Yale, Cambridge, and the Library of Congress and is the recipient of the National Endowment of the Humanities Public Scholar Award and the 2021 Andrew Carnegie Fellowship.
