No historical event has left as deep an imprint on America’s collective memory as the Civil War. In the war’s aftermath, Americans had to embrace and cast off a traumatic past. David Blight, author of Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, will explore the perilous path of remembering and forgetting, and reveal its tragic costs to race relations and America’s national reunion.

Join the Maine Humanities Council and Maine Historical Society for this evening lecture on Thursday, May 7, 2015, at Portland Public Library’s Rines Auditorium. Professor Blight’s lecture will be the culminating public event of a three-year collaboration, Local and Legendary: Maine and the Civil War, between the MHC and MHS.