Professor Mary Frances Berry reviews the life of Callie House, an ex-slave and civil rights activist in the late 1800s and early 1900s who started the Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association, which sought African-American pensions based on those offered Union soldiers. Berry presents House as a forerunner of figures such as Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. Her presentation includes a question-and-answer session.

Audio and video options are available.

Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian Joseph Ellis tells six stories from the early years of the American Republic, looking at the choices the Founding Fathers faced and the choices they made. Ellis examines the impact these decisions had on U.S. history and how they relate to current situations and life.

A panel discusses the history of Chinese immigration and Chinese Americans and their experiences in Boston from the 1800s onwards.

Professor Anouar Majid covers the history of U.S./Islam cultural conflict, very generally. His presentation is followed by a question-and-answer session.

Professor Seth Jacobs traces his research into the history of the Vietnam War and the discoveries that he incorporated into his book America's Miracle Man in Viet Nam: Ngo Dinh Diem, Religion, Race, and US Intervention in Southeast Asia. Jacobs argues that a midcentury religious revival in America, as well as policymakers' racist perceptions of Asians, led the United States to support the disastrous, autocratic Diem regime in South Vietnam, when other candidates for U.S. support existed.

Writer Carol Bundy talks about the life of her great-great-great uncle, Charles Russell Lowell, Jr., a Boston abolitionist and industrialist eventually killed in the Civil War. The presentation includes slides.

Audio and video options are available.

Professors Seth Jacobs and Franziska Seraphim lecture on America's strategy in the Pacific during World War II, and how Americans perceived the Japanese enemy. They discusses America's war crimes against the Japanese, anti-Japanese propaganda, and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Scholars P. Gabrielle Foreman and Reginald H. Pitts reveal historical details previously lost to time about the life of Harriet Wilson, author of the 1859 novel Our Nig; Or Sketches from the Life of a Free Black. Considered by some to be the first North American African-American novelist, Harriet Wilson largely disappeared from the historical record in 1863 until the discovery of new information.

Stephen Kendrick, author of Sarah's Long Walk, traces the history of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education landmark decision in favor of school desegregation back through American history to a court case in 1848. In 1848, African-American attorney Robert Morris supported a Boston African-American man in suing for his daughter's right to go to a desegregated school close to her home.

Director of the Massachusetts Historical Society William Fowler follows the history of the French and Indian War, emphasizing its importance as a turning point in U.S. history that remains little taught and little known popularly.