Biographer and history professor James O'Toole describes the lives of the Healy brothers, children of a multiracial slave couple, in mid-19th-century East Coast society. Three of the brothers successfully passed as white and gained prominent social positions: one as a a bishop; one as Georgetown University's president; and one as a priest, rector, and seminary director.

Civil Rights Project co-founder and director Gary Orfield and director and president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund Theodore Shaw examine how researchers and legal advocates can further the aim of advancing civil rights in knowledge and policy. With a look back to the Civil Rights Project's original research agenda and its impact over the past ten years, this discussion considers how research on social equity and civil rights can be successfully extended to include the changing reality of a highly stratified multiracial society with a white minority.

The discussion audio is available as a downloadable mp3 file.

Author Lisa Alther talks about her work to trace her family genealogy and determine whether her ancestry includes any members of a perhaps-folkloric group of Tennessee residents called the "Melungeons." She talks about how people reconstruct their family trees, adding and omitting to create the history they wish to remember.

French-Canadian reporter Richard Hetu details the roles of French Canadians in the Louis and Clark Expedition. Hetu focuses particularly on Toussaint Charbonneau, husband of Sacagawea. The presentation includes slides.

The lecture's audio is also available for download as a mp3 file.

Professor and author Michael Oren looks at the history of relations between the U.S. and the Middle East, beginning in 1785 with the Barbary Wars and continuing to the present day.

The lecture audio is also available as a mp3 file.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author James M. McPherson examines the contemporary popular perspectives on the Civil War, both of Northerners and Southerners, civilians and soldiers. McPherson uses the popular music of the period as a framework for discussing the changing views, and focuses on the growing desire to end the war and the increasing sense of hopelessness that it would ever end.

An audio version can be downloaded.

Professor H. Robert Baker looks at the 1854 public protest against the return of fugitive slave H. Robert Baker, and examines the resulting trials and political decisions that followed—ending with the Wisconsin Supreme Court declaring the Fugitive Slave Law unconstitutional.

Audio and video options are available.

Author Jacqueline Tobin reexamines the history of the Underground Railroad, looking at the extension of the Railroad into Canada and the escape of fugitive slaves into Canada. She also examines the life of ex-slaves as free people in Canada.

Video and audio versions are available.

As a part of a bicentennial series celebrating Boston Athenaeum writers, Marshall Moriarty presents orator and statesman Daniel Webster (1782–1852); Representative Martha M. Walz presents activist Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880); and Daniel R. Coquillette presents sixth President of the U.S. John Quincy Adams (1767–1848).

NAACP chairman Julian Bond reviews his experiences as an active participant in the Civil Rights Movement, including helping found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Southern Poverty Law Center. He also talks about the continuing need for social action today, both combating racism and other social issues.

An mp3 version of the lecture audio can be downloaded.