The 13th annual Lincoln Legacy Lectures, presented by the University of Illinois Springfield, will be held from 7 to 9 p.m. on Thursday, October 15, 2015 in Brookens Auditorium, located on the lower level of Brookens Library at UIS.
This year’s topic is “Lincoln and Voting Rights,” to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Voting Rights Act of 1965. The lectures, and a reception and book signing that will immediately follow, are free and open to the public. No reservation is required.
The Lincoln Legacy Lecture Series brings nationally known scholars to Springfield to present lectures on topics that both engaged Abraham Lincoln and the citizens of his era and are still timely today. This year’s featured speakers are Michael Vorenberg, Associate Professor of History at Brown University, and Ronald Keith Gaddie, President’s Associates Presidential Professor of Political Science at the University of Oklahoma. Michael Burlingame, the Chancellor Naomi B. Lynn Distinguished Chair in Lincoln Studies at UIS, will give opening remarks on “Lincoln and Black Voting Rights,” and serve as moderator. In the first lecture, Vorenberg will describe “Voting Rights and the Meaning of Freedom: The View from the Civil War Era.” In the second lecture, Gaddie will discuss “Citizenship and Voting Rights in the Modern Era.” Vorenberg is the author of Final Freedom: The Civil War, The Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment (Cambridge University Press, 2004). Gaddie is coauthor of The Triumph of Voting Rights in the South (University of Oklahoma Press, 2009) and The Rise and Fall of the Voting Rights Act (Oklahoma, forthcoming 2016). Burlingame is the author of the two-volume biography, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008).
The Lincoln Legacy Lecture Series is sponsored by the UIS Center for State Policy and Leadership, in cooperation with the Chancellor Naomi B. Lynn Distinguished Chair in Lincoln Studies. Cosponsors of this year's event include the Abraham Lincoln Association, UIS College of Education and Human Services, UIS College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, UIS College of Public Affairs and Administration, Shelby Cullom Davis Charitable Fund, Engaged Citizenship Speaker Series, Gobberdiel Endowment, Illinois State Historical Society, Illinois State Library, League of Women Voters of McLean County, Springfield Branch of the NAACP, Springfield Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, and WUIS/Illinois Issues.
Doors will open at 6:00 p.m. Seating in Brookens Auditorium is limited; however overflow seating will be available in the Public Affairs Center, Level 1, Conference Rooms C/D and G, where the audience can watch a large-screen live video feed. Those unable to attend in person can watch a live webcast by going to www.uis.edu/technology/uislive.html at the time of the event.
For more information, contact the Center for State Policy and Leadership at 217/206-7094 or visit http://www.uis.edu/cspl/.
