Dr. Jim Basker, “Black Lives Have Always Mattered: American History and the Gilder Lehrman Institute in 2020”

REGISTER NOW!

In this talk, which will be dedicated to the memory of Richard Gilder, Dr. Jim Basker will present 6 or 7 moments in American history that were shaped by the African American presence, often in unexpected or forgotten ways. The focus will be on key documents, from a rare printing of the Declaration of Independence and a unique letter that Frederick Douglass wrote to his former master, to a 1926 NAACP poster and a civil rights placard from 1968. While progress is never smooth, it is always made possible by education and perseverance.

Basker is president of the Gilder Lehrman Institute and Richard Gilder Professor of Literary History at Barnard College, Columbia University. As president of the Gilder Lehrman Institute since 1997, Basker has overseen the development of history education initiatives nationwide, including history high schools, teacher seminars, traveling exhibitions, digital archives, and the National History Teacher of the Year Award program.

Basker has also served as project director for several history exhibitions at the New York Historical Society, including Alexander Hamilton: The Man Who Made Modern America (2004–2005), Lincoln in His Own Words: An Intimate View of Our Greatest President (2009), and John Brown: The Abolitionist and His Legacy (2009–2010). He is an elected member of the Society of American Historians and former fellow of the American Antiquarian Society. He serves on Mount Vernon’s Scholarly Advisory Board, the boards of the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize and the Frederick Douglass Book Prize, and as a trustee of the New-York Historical Society.

Basker was educated at Harvard, Cambridge, and Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He taught for seven years at Harvard University before coming to New York, and he has been a visiting professor at NYU, Cambridge University, and Rogue Community College in Oregon. He is also founder and president of OxBridge Academic Programs, which has sponsored summer programs and teacher seminars in Oxford, Cambridge, Paris, and Barcelona for more than twenty years.

His publications include Amazing Grace: Poems about Slavery 1660–1810 (2002), Early American Abolitionists (2005), and American Antislavery Writing: Colonial Beginnings to Emancipation (2012) as well as scores of essays and educational booklets on various topics in English and American history and literature.

Thanks to Richard Gilder, Dr. Basker has a long and recurring connection to Islesboro. Gilder invited Basker and his family to Islesboro often over the years, so he now counts many people on Islesboro as friends.

He will be introduced by Islesboro resident and Oxford classmate, John Rex Waller.