Sarah Gronningsater, The Rising Generation: Gradual Abolition, Black Legal Culture, and the Making of National Freedom

Under New York’s 1799 Gradual Abolition scheme, a child born to an enslaved mother (as of a certain date) was deemed “free,” but had to continue as the servant of the mother’s owner until the age of 25 (for a girl) or 28 (for a boy).  Gronningsater develops a deeply researched picture of the lives, politics, and legal efforts of this generation of Black children of ambiguous status, and how they combined with others to help shape important changes to the U.S. Constitution as well as groundbreaking state and Federal civil rights legislation.  Gronningsater is a historian of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century United States at the University of Pennsylvania; she has won multiple academic prizes and citations, and awards for excellence in teaching, notably Richard S. Dunn Award for Distinguished Teaching, the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching and the Penn Friars Senior Society Faculty Award.

This lecture will be held at Bedford Playhouse (633 Old Post Rd, Bedford, NY) due to ongoing construction at John Jay Homestead.

6:30 – Reception with light refreshments
7:00 – Lecture begins
8:00 – Book signing

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Interested in becoming a member of the Scholars Committee? Click here.

Brenda Wineapple, Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation

In 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee, John Scopes was charged with breaking the new law that banned the teaching of evolution in public schools.  His trial became an international sensation, with brilliant and famous personalities – one, a former presidential candidate – representing the opposing sides during the so-called Roaring Twenties.  Keeping the Faith brings to life this trial, its combatants, and the way it exposed profound divisions in America that still resonate today, over the meaning of freedom, religion, education, and civil liberties in a democracy.  A former fellow at the Dorothy B. and Lewis Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment, Wineapple has received such honors as the Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and her essays and reviews regularly appear in The New York Review of Books among other publications.

This lecture will be held at Bedford Playhouse (633 Old Post Rd, Bedford, NY) due to ongoing construction at John Jay Homestead.

6:30 – Reception with light refreshments
7:00 – Lecture begins
8:00 – Book signing

Purchase In-Person Tickets Here

Purchase Zoom Tickets Here

Interested in becoming a member of the Scholars Committee? Click here.

Richard Brookhiser, Glorious Lessons:  John Trumbull, Painter of the American Revolution

John Trumbull saw the American Revolution firsthand, including being shot at and jailed as a spy.  He was seen by his contemporaries as a painter, but he thought of himself as a historian, wanting “to preserve and diffuse the memory of the noblest series of actions which have ever presented themselves in the history of man.”  He knew John Jay well, having served as his secretary during the negotiations of the Jay Treaty, and he painted the only portrait in the Homestead’s collection that Jay actually sat for (the rest are copies).  Brookhiser is author also of several renowned biographies of Founders — Marshall, Madison, Washington, Morris, Lincoln too — and has written and published widely, including serving as a senior editor at National Review.  He was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2008 by President George W Bush.

This lecture will be held at Bedford Playhouse (633 Old Post Rd, Bedford, NY) due to ongoing construction at John Jay Homestead.

6:30 – Reception with light refreshments
7:00 – Lecture begins
8:00 – Book signing

Purchase In-Person Tickets Here

Purchased Zoom Tickets Here

Interested in becoming a member of the Scholars Committee? Click here.