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.

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.

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Charles Fuller discusses his life and motivations as an African-American author. The presentation also includes discussions and performances which bring the testimonies of slaves, soldiers, reporters, and activists from the Civil War to life, focusing on African-American history during the Civil War and African-American memory of the war.

Three scholars present papers on the history of Native American and African slavery and the slave trade in New England. The papers are "Another Face of Slavery: Indentured Servitude of Native Americans in Southern New England," "Freedom and Conflicts over Class, Gender, and Identity: The Evolving Relationship between Indians and Blacks in Southern New England, 1750–1870," and "Enslavement and Indians in Southern New England: Unraveling a Hidden History."

Authors Philip McFarland and Debby Applegate trace the lives of the Beechers, a family which included the siblings Henry Ward Beecher, a famous preacher, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Audio and video options are available.

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.

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.

Author Zoe Trodd follows the history of protest literature in the United States, looking at its use in movements ranging from pre-Revolutionary War to the present day. The presentation also includes Adoyo Owuor reading the Emancipation Proclamation, Timothy Patrick McCarthy reading Eugene v. Debs Statement to the Court, John Stauffer displaying a collection of 20th-century protest photography, and Doric Wilson presenting excerpts from his play Street Theater.

An mp3 of the presentation may be downloaded.