(March 1, 2012)
The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation has announced its third cycle of grants to 10 different organizations in six states plus the District of Columbia to support programs aimed at perpetuating the study of the 16th President during the current Civil War Sesquicentennial. The current round of grants totals $134,000. These awards will support a range of activities from tourism promotion to communication-system modernization to textile conservation to the development of Lincoln conferences and exhibitions—two of them, notably, in the South.
The Foundation’s funding comes from gifts raised in the final years of its predecessor organization, the U. S. Lincoln Bicentennial Commission (ALBC), created by the President and Congress in 2000 to plan and organize events marking Lincoln’s 200th birthday in 2009. The successor foundation has since sought to encourage and help support activities aimed at perpetuating its original goal of completing Lincoln’s “unfinished work.”
“We are proud to offer our support to these 10 well-conceived plans to promote Lincoln history and preservation at the highest levels of professional scholarship and popular appeal,” commented Harold Holzer, Chairman of the Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation. “My Foundation colleagues and I continue to be amazed and delighted by the range of activities that gestate nationwide—requiring only modest support to bring the Lincoln story to an ever-widening audience of Americans. In the current cycle we have covered a wide range of needs and issues, and we hope these projects that can now go forward with our help attract the kind of broad interest and local attention they deserve.”
Foundation support will go to the following recipients:
(over)
- The Abraham Lincoln Association, Springfield, IL ($5,000), to support a day-long 2013 conference, “The Results of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.”
- The Old State Capitol Foundation, Springfield, IL ($7,500), to help fund installation of a new audio and microphone system in historic Representative Hall, the chamber where Lincoln delivered his “House Divided” address in 1858, and now the site of many public history events.
- Looking for Lincoln Heritage Coalition, Springfield, IL ($33,000), to help develop and support development of a 42-county historic tourism area linked by road signage, website data, marketing, and programs at sites where Lincoln visited, lived, or worked during his Illinois years. U. S. Senator Dick Durbin, former co-chair of the ALBC, helped authorize and fund “Looking for Lincoln.”
- Lincoln Heritage Museum at Lincoln College, Lincoln, IL ($1,000), to support a summer seminar for teachers around the theme: “Abraham Lincoln: His Life, Leadership, and Legacy.”
- The Kentucky Lincoln Sites Alliance, Hodgenville, KY ($12,000), to help implement Lincoln-related educational and marketing initiatives along the new Lincoln Heritage trail in the state of his birth.
- The Department of History, Clemson University, Clemson, SC ($27,000), to support a 2013 Emancipation Proclamation conference as part of the university’s “On Home Ground” sesquicentennial initiative.
- The Ulysses S. Grant Association, Starkville, MS ($15,000), to sponsor a series of Lincoln lectures at the recently relocated USGA, focusing on the crucial partnership between the President and his most important general.
- Bureau of Historic Sites, New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, Waterford, NY ($15,000) fund conservation of the U. S. Flag that adorned Lincoln’s bier during his funeral in Albany, New York in 1865—part of a larger effort to preserve the State’s entire collection of Civil War-era battle flags.
- Lehigh Valley Heritage Museum, Allentown, PA ($5,000), to help fund a Lincoln exhibition and symposium on “Abraham Lincoln: A Modern American.”
- Lincoln Group of the District of Columbia, Washington, D.C. ($13,500), to fund a 2012 symposium on Lincoln and the Constitution on national Constitution Day, the 115th anniversary of the signing of the Constitution of the United States.
Members of the Foundation Board are: Orville Vernon Burton, Vice Chairman; Thomas Campbell, Treasurer; Charles Scholz, Secretary; Darrel Bigham, David Lawrence, Edna Greene Medford, Antonio Mora, Jean Powers Soman, and Frank J. Williams.