The Shirley Plantation Foundation and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History are partnering to bring a traveling exhibition to Shirley Plantation.

This exhibition charts the history of emancipation and the struggle for civil rights from 1850 to 1964, focusing on how, due to the persistence of African Americans, abolitionists, and politicians, the Civil War became an “abolition war”; how the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1863 and the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments transformed the Constitution of the United States; and how we continue to debate the legacies of slavery and emancipation and reach for the goal of equality.

This exhibition was developed by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in partnership with the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center and is curated by David W. Blight, Class of 1954 Professor of History at Yale University, and Susan F. Saidenberg, the Director of Public Programs and Exhibitions at the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.