2022 Mary and James Beaumont Endowed Lincoln Legacy Lecture Series
When: Saturday, October 22nd, 2022 from 6-8:30 pm
Where: Student Union Ballroom on the Campus of the University of Illinois Springfield
The Center for Lincoln Studies at the University of Illinois Springfield invites the public to attend the 2022 Mary and James Beaumont Endowed Lincoln Legacy Lecture Series discussion on "Lincoln and African Americans" with professors Jonathan White, Matthew Norman, and Fred Hord.
Our three speakers will discuss the many African Americans of the Civil War era and their connection to Abraham Lincoln. Their scholarship centers on African Americans' voices to explore how they felt about the president. Michael Burlingame, holder of the Chancellor Naomi B. Lynn Distinguished Chair in Lincoln Studies at UIS, will moderate and provide an overview.
If you are unable to attend in person you can register to watch the program online.
Presenters
Jonathan W. White is a professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University. He is author or editor of 13 books and more than 100 articles, essays, and reviews about the Civil War. His earlier book, Emancipation, the Union Army, and the Reelection of Abraham Lincoln, was named the best book of 2014 by Civil War Monitor, was a finalist for both the Gilder-Lehrman Lincoln Prize and the Jefferson Davis Prize, and won the Abraham Lincoln Institute's 2015 book prize. Midnight in America: Darkness, Sleep, and Dreams during the Civil War was named the best book of 2017 by Civil War Monitor. His 2018 book, "Our Little Monitor": The Greatest Invention of the Civil War, co-authored with Anna Gibson Holloway, was a finalist for the Indie Book Awards and honorable mention for the John Lyman Book Award. He is a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians, serves on the Boards of Directors of the Abraham Lincoln Institute and the Abraham Lincoln Association, and is the Vice Chair of The Lincoln Forum. He also serves on the Ford’s Theatre Advisory Council, the editorial board of the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, and as editor of The Lincoln Forum Bulletin. In 2019 he won the Outstanding Faculty Award of the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, the highest award given to faculty in the Commonwealth. His most recent books are My Work Among the Freedmen: The Civil War and Reconstruction Letters of Harriet M. Buss (2021), which he co-edited with his student, Lydia Davis; To Address You As My Friend: African Americans' Letters to Abraham Lincoln (2021); and A House Built By Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House (2022).
Dr. Matthew Norman, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Cincinnati Blue Ash, was a history major at Knox College. He has an A.M. and Ph.D. in History from the University of Illinois. Professor Norman taught at Gettysburg College from 2006 to 2011. He has published articles and reviews on Abraham Lincoln and race relations in Illinois. He is also under contract with ABC-CLIO to write a reference work on Lincoln entitled, All Things Lincoln: An Encyclopedia of Lincoln’s World. His recent work Knowing Him by Heart: African-American Makings of Abraham Lincoln.
Dr. Fred Hord is a full emeritus professor in Africana Studies and former chair of the Department of Africana Studies at Knox College. He is the editor of I Am Because We Are: A Black Philosophy Reader and Reconstructing Memory: Black Literary Criticism. He has been awarded Minority Access National Role Model Award and Who's Who Among Black Americans. Member, Editorial board of the Journal of Black Studies. Founder and President, Association for Black Culture Centers (ABCC). He is a member of the Board of the Illinois Committee for Black Concerns in Higher Education and the National Council for Black Studies. In addition, he helped to raise in-kind support of more than $15,000 toward library acquisitions at the library of the ABLE (Allied Blacks for Liberty and Equality) Center for Black Culture. His recent work Knowing Him by Heart: African-American Makings of Abraham Lincoln.
