Join us as we mark the opening of a new special exhibition at the New York State Museum. The exhibit features two important historic documents: Abraham Lincoln’s preliminary draft of the Emancipation Proclamation, issued on September 22, 1862, and select pages from a speech Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered in New York City in September 1962, commemorating the centennial of the Civil War. The program will feature readings of brief excerpts of historical documents and poetry, and a conversation about the complicated legacy of slavery and emancipation in the United States.
A major force in the New York City poetry scene since the 1970s, Patricia Spears Jones is the current State Poet of New York, by proclamation of the governor and mandate of the legislature, under the auspices of the NYS Writers Institute. Dr. Jennifer Burns is a lecturer in Africana Studies at the University at Albany. Dr. Jennifer Lemak is the State Museum’s chief curator of History.
This event is cosponsored by the New York State Education Department’s Office of Cultural Education and the NYS Writers Institute.
