Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition

09/15/2026

On this day in 1963, members of the Ku Klux Klan planted a bomb inside the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four young girls. (via Mississippi Today)

On this day in 1963, Klansmen planted a bomb inside the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four young girls and blinded a fifth.

09/11/2026

From GLC Director David W Blight, David worked closely with an advisory team for the curators of the 9/11 Memorial Museum, and conducted institutes for American secondary teachers at the Museum as it opened.

A historian examines the United States' historical memory of 9/11 twenty-five years after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

09/02/2026

📚 Announcing the 2026 Frederick Douglass Book Prize Finalists

Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition is pleased to announce the three finalists for the 2026 Frederick Douglass Book Prize, one of the most prestigious awards for scholarship on slavery, resistance, abolition, and the experiences of enslaved people.

This year’s finalists are:

- Kim F. Hall, The Sweet Taste of Empire: Sugar, Mastery, and Pleasure in the Anglo Caribbean (University of Pennsylvania Press)
- Casey Schmitt, The Predatory Sea: Human Trafficking and Captivity in the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean (University of Pennsylvania Press)
- Daniel Lord Smail, Magdalena Coline: A Life Beyond Slavery in Mediterranean Europe (Princeton University Press)

Selected from 95 submissions, the finalists represent exceptional scholarship that expands our understanding of slavery and its enduring histories across the Caribbean, Europe, and the Atlantic world.

The $25,000 Frederick Douglass Book Prize, jointly sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Center and The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, recognizes the best book written in English on slavery, resistance, or abolition and published in the preceding year.

The winner will be announced this fall, with the award presented at a celebration at Trinity Church Wall Street in New York City in February 2027.

Congratulations to all three finalists! 👏

Learn more about the 2026 finalists and the Frederick Douglass Book Prize through the Gilder Lehrman Center at Yale: https://macmillan.yale.edu/glc/stories/yale-announces-2026-frederick-douglass-book-prize-finalists

08/27/2026

08/25/2026

On this day in 1967, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover issued directives to spy on and discredit Martin Luther King Jr. and others in the civil rights movement.

08/25/2026

Rashauna Johnson on September 17, 2026

he Department of Black Studies at Yale University warmly welcomes you to the Fall 2026 Endeavors Colloquium Seminar Series.

The seminar series will take place on Thursdays from 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at:

Gordon Parks Room 201
81 Wall Street
New Haven, CT 06511

A light lunch will be provided.
Fall 2026 Seminar Schedule

September 17, 2026
Rashauna Johnson (link is external), Professor of History, University of Chicago

Kin in the Cotton Fields: A Blues History of Black Lijfe
This talk uses archival research and family memories to illuminate the lives and times of select figures who died and, critically, also lived in the long shadow of King Cotton. Drawing on select moments in the history of the author’s maternal grandmother’s birthplace, Louisiana’s Feliciana region, it meditates on the deeply contingent experiences of 19th-century “development” and “progress” and the ways those divergent experiences and the memories to which they gave rise haunt us all.

07/23/2026

⌛Don't forget to register for the summer Gilder Lehrman Teacher Seminars Online! Ten courses will be offered, including "African American Studies: History in Context," taught by Keisha N. Blain, PhD. The deadline for registration is Monday, July 27!

This seminar examines some of the major themes in African American and African diasporic experiences over a period of several hundred years. The course also aligns with the scope and sequence of the AP African American Studies course.

This course will run from August 3 to August 7. Sign up to deepen your historical knowledge and discover new ways to engage with your students in the classroom!

Learn more and register: https://ow.ly/Gej550YxGF1

07/22/2026

Professor David W Blight will be testifying this morning at 10am EDT before the House Committee on the Smithsonian. Here is the link to the livestream: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=J-Q4fuu7dPc&ra=m.