Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture: The Second Founding

Historian Eric Foner will present "The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Forged a Constitutional Revolution. The lecture--about the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments and the struggle for racial justice--will focus on how the abolition of slavery and the effort to create a biracial democracy were written into the Constitution, some of the unanticipated consequences (including the loophole allowing for the involuntary labor of prisoners) and how the Supreme Court systematically dismantled the amendments in the late 19th century, with consequences we still live with.

About the Presenter: Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, is one of this country's most prominent historians. He received his doctoral degree at Columbia under the supervision of Richard Hofstadter. He is one of only two persons to serve as president of the three major professional organizations: the Organization of American Historians, American Historical Association, and Society of American Historians, and one of a handful to have won the Bancroft and Pulitzer Prizes in the same year.

Registration is now open for this event.