Blog Archives
On Thursday, June 8, LancasterHistory.org will host Dr. Amanda Kemp for a reading and discussion of her book Say the Wrong Thing: Stories and Strategies for Racial Justice and Authentic Community. Part memoir and part social commentary, Dr. Kemp’s book provides insight and strategies for creating racial justice and a strong sense of shared community. Through a short collection of essays, Kemp reflects on her own interracial relationship, parenting her Black teenage son, and making art in the age of Black Lives Matter.
“Say the Wrong Thing is not a pat guide to multicultural appreciation,” writes educator Lisa Graustein, “it is a vibrant, commanding invitation to be the change that we need, right now.”
Dr. Kemp has been a lifelong poet-performer and advocate of racial justice and equality since 1983. She earned her B.A. from Stanford University where she was awarded The Gardner Fellowship for Public Service. A poet and playwright, Kemp earned her doctoral degree in Performance Studies at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. Dr. Kemp has taught at Cornell University, Dickinson College, Millersville University, and Franklin & Marshall College where she served as the chair of Africana Studies. She has keynoted Martin Luther King programs at colleges, high schools, and in elementary school settings. Kemp is currently a Visiting Scholar in Africana Studies at Franklin & Marshall College and continues to publish on race, performance, and freedom.
This event will take place on Thursday, June 8, 2017 in Ryder Hall at LancasterHistory.org, 230 N. President Avenue Lancaster. An author’s reception and book signing will begin at 4pm, followed by the reading and discussion from 4:30-5:30. This event is free and open to the public.
Join us as we transport you back to 1857 and 1858. President James Buchanan and Secretary of State Lewis Cass discuss intelligence and strategy to capture the freebooter William Walker and his private army which has invaded Nicaragua. Experience and learn of the challenges faced by United States Senate which debated the invasion, as well as the Navy’s arrest of Walker. Did his arrest violate the Neutrality Laws? Experience the debate and learn of Walker’s fate in this May’s Living History at Wheatland!
The Living History at Wheatland program, The Arrest of An American Dictator, takes place on Saturday, May 6, 2017 with tours on the hour starting at 12pm and the last starting at 3pm. Standard tours of Wheatland are also offered at 10am and 11am ONLY. Click here or call 717-392-4633 to purchase your tickets. Advanced tickets strongly recommended as Living History tours often sell out and walk-in space is not guaranteed. Your tickets also include admission to the exhibition galleries.
On Thursday, April 20, The Edward Hand Medical Heritage Foundation, Lancaster General Health (LGH), and LancasterHistory.org will come together to present The History of Orthopedic Medicine in Lancaster County. A distinguished roster of LGH physicians are slated to speak in this panel presentation, including Doctors Gerald Rothacker Jr., Christopher Cooke, Wayne Conrad, Timothy Tymon, David Hughes, Thomas Westphal, and Paul Carroll.
This program is the second collaboration between the Edward Hand Foundation, LGH, and LancasterHistory.org to present our county’s medical history. The 2016 panel focused on the History of Cardiology.
This event will take place on Thursday, April 20, 2017, in Ryder Hall at LancasterHistory.org, 230 N President Avenue, Lancaster. A speaker’s reception with refreshments will begin at 4pm, followed by the lecture from 4:30-6pm. This event is free and open to the public.
On Thursday, February 16, 2017, in honor of Black History Month, LancasterHistory.org will host a special screening of the locally produced short film Carry Me Home — A Tribute to Harriet Tubman. Carry Me Home depicts the life and faith of Harriet Tubman, who helped to set more than 300 slaves free through the Underground Railroad in the 1800s. Based on a true story, the film zeroes in on a real-life encounter between Tubman and Maria Ennals, who was a slave in the South during the mid-1800s. Tubman leads Ennals and her family through life-threatening trials causing them all to question whether or not freedom is worth the price they must pay to obtain it. A panel discussion will follow the film.
Carry Me Home was developed by Dayspring Christian Academy in partnership with LampHouse Films, Lancaster, as part of their Remember America initiative. The film’s director, Josh Henry, and director of photography, Michael Schmucker, are both Dayspring graduates, and they worked alongside current Dayspring faculty and staff on the film. Director Josh Henry will participate on the panel.
The film screening and panel discussion of Carry Me Home will take place on Thursday, February 16, 2017 in Ryder Hall at LancasterHistory.org, 230 N President Avenue, Lancaster, PA. A social gathering will begin at 4pm, followed by the film screening and panel discussion at 4:30pm. The event is free and open to the public.
Join us as we transport you back to September 1866 at the Wheatland Farm of James Buchanan. Desperate for good domestic help, Mr. Buchanan has hired Thomas & Rosanna Gordon, a couple who had resigned from their posts only a few months earlier. Rosanna is the best cook Wheatland has ever had; however, Thomas is, as Mr. Buchanan describes, “anything but agreeable!” When you visit, you will have a unique opportunity to eavesdrop on the arguments and drama that took place at Wheatland in 1866.
The Living History at Wheatland program Anything but Agreeable takes place on Saturday, September 3, 2016 with tours on the hour starting at 12pm and the last starting at 3pm. A standard tour of Wheatland is also offered at 10am & 11am. We strongly advise making reservations in advance for your tour since tours do fill up and walk-in space is not guaranteed. Please arrive 15 minutes prior to your tour so you may use the facilities and check in.
Visit LancasterHistory.org/events or call 717-392-4633 to purchase your tickets.
Paul Finkelman, Ph.D. will return to LancasterHistory.org to discuss his research on The Pennsylvania Connection: Black Freedom, Reconstruction, & Keystone State Leadership. This year we celebrate the sesquicentennial of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the passage by Congress of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which revolutionized citizenship in America, put the final nail in the coffin of American slavery, and set the stage (ultimately) for the Civil Rights Revolution of the 1960s. With the second largest delegation in the House of Representatives, Pennsylvanians played a major role in Congress during the 1860s. The key player in the struggle to create meaningful civil rights in America was Thaddeus Stevens, who represented Lancaster County in the House of Representatives. Few members of the House are more important in our history—and more controversial—than Stevens.
Learn more about Stevens and why he helped to strengthen America by implementing Lincoln’s call for “A New Birth of Freedom.” Hated by former slave owners, adored by advocates of freedom, and feared by even his colleagues, this lecture argues that he was Lancaster’s greatest contribution to American history.
The Presidential Lecture The Pennsylvania Connection will take place on Thursday, September 8 in Ryder Hall at LancasterHistory.org, 230 N President Avenue. A social gathering with refreshments will begin at 4pm, followed by the lecture at 4:30pm. This event is free and open to the public.
Eighteenth-century consumers were competitive, fashion-driven, social climbers, always trying to keep up appearances and mimic their superiors, and then there were German Americans—the thrifty farmers, who just didn’t care. Are these historical stereotypes true? Join historical archaeologist, Dr. Lydia Garver, for a discussion on how probate inventories and archaeology illuminate the material world of German American households—their clocks, books, coffee mills, and teapots. The objects German immigrants bought, as well as what they brought with them, reveal rich patterns
of economic engagement that shaped their community and identity in America.
Lydia Garver has a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Indiana University (Bloomington, IN). She is originally from southern Lancaster County and got her start in archaeology as a high school student volunteering on the State Museum of Pennsylvania’s excavations at Ephrata Cloister. Her dissertation focused on the farmstead of an Ephrata Householder family. She is currently the Principal Investigator of the Archaeology Program at the Speaker’s House in Trappe, PA. The site was the home of Frederick Augustus Muhlenberg, the First Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. More information is available at http://www.speakershouse.org.
The colloquium German American Consumers will take place on Thursday, June 30, 2016 in Ryder Hall at LancasterHistory.org, 230 N President Avenue, Lancaster. A social gathering will begin at 4pm, followed by the lecture from 4:30-5:30pm. This event is free and open to the public.
