Lincoln 150th Foundation Work Ends

Originally published March 2016 · p. 25

NEW YORK — Its mission accomplished — namely, to use its endowment to support nationwide efforts aimed at studying and commemorating Abraham Lincoln — the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation (ALBF) officially concluded its organizational life in January. The Foundation offered a final round of financial grants totaling $72,000 and co-hosted a wellattended Miami symposium on “Lincoln and Immigration” as its final duties. The free HistoryMiami program and reception were made possible by the generous funding of board member Jean Powers Soman. It featured a keynote address by historian Harold Holzer and panel discussion. At its last annual meeting the ALBF approved funding for five new projects and announced three unprecedented, unsolicited grants. Those three grants are: $25,000 to the Papers of Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, Ill., in an effort to boost that financially challenged but essential research effort; $10,000 to the Allen County Library, Fort Wayne, Ind., to support the Lincoln Bicentennial website, which the library hosts; and $5,000 to President Lincoln’s Cottage at the Soldiers’ Home in Washington, to encourage its ongoing exhibitions and public programs. The ALBF’s primary 2016 grants went to the following applicants: $10,000 to Southern Illinois University Press to support the continued publication of its “Concise Lincoln” book series; $5,000 to the Chase College of Law at Northern Kentucky University in conjunction with the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati, to co-host a 2016 conference on “Abraham Lincoln and the Germans; Also, $1,000 to the Images of the Motherland project in Philadelphia to support a Black History Month community event focused on the African-American experience during the Civil War; and $16,000 to the Newberry Library in Chicago to help fund an NPR radio program dramatizing Civil War soldiers’ recollections of Abraham Lincoln. Since it began making grants in the fall of 2010, the ALBF awarded nearly $600,000 to more than 60 projects. The funds supported restoration of the historic railroad depot and the Gettysburg Address monument at Gettysburg, Pa.; Abraham and Mary Lincoln’s “courting couch” and the Lincoln Tomb in Springfield, Ill.; and helped fund digitization of Lincoln-era Illinois newspapers at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and the clipping file once housed in Fort Wayne’s Lincoln Museum. ALBF funds supported an Underground Railroad colloquium in Philadelphia, a public program series at the Soldiers’ Home, and a Lincoln exhibition that toured Russia. Support went to multiple museums, conferences, heritage tourism, educational and public programs, and educational materials co-produced with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Its next-to-last cycle of funding supported programs commemorating Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address inside the U.S. Capitol and at Fort Sumter and Ford’s Theatre programs and exhibits to mark the Lincoln assassination sesquicentennial. ALBF Chairman Harold Holzer said board members felt great satisfaction. “Over the years, we have responded to countless worthy applicants for support, and have helped many events, projects, publications, multi-media endeavors, and educational efforts to achieve success.” He said it was a honor for the board to direct use of funds raised by the original U.S. Abraham Lincoln

Bicentennial Commission “in order to spur, support, and enable the ongoing recognition of Lincoln during these years of the Civil War 150th anniversary.” Several board members joined the ALBF as appointees to the original, congressionally mandated commission in 2001. Original commission co-chairmen included U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, former Congressman and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood and the late Congressmen Jack Kemp and William H. Gray III. Holzer acknowledged former executive directors Michael Bishop and Eileen Mackevich and Washington staff members. The current ALBF board, which succeeded the bicentennial commission, all of whom served for six years, in addition to Holzer, who is from New York, are Orville Vernon Burton, South Carolina; Thomas Campbell, Illinois; Charles Scholz, Illinois; Darrel Bigham, Indiana; David Lawrence, Florida; Edna Greene Medford, Maryland; Antonio Mora, Florida; Jean Powers Soman, Florida; and Frank J. Williams, Rhode Island.