Abilene Christian University’s Carl Spain Center on Race Studies and Spiritual Action will host the Don Williams and Royce Money Distinguished Lecture Series May 1 at 7 p.m. in Chapel on the Hill in the Onstead-Packer Biblical Studies Building. The event, featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annette Gordon-Reed, is free and open to the public. Register here.
Gordon-Reed will be speaking on “The Story of Our Founding and Its Impact for Us Today,” and the lecture is designed to help the community engage in collective remembrance, said Tryce Prince, executive director of the Carl Spain Center.
“This year marks the 250th anniversary of the United States Declaration of Independence. America 250 provides us with an opportunity to practice what the Carl Spain Center refers to as ‘collective remembrance.’ We can courageously face our past, its triumphs and tragedies, knowing the power of God within us helps us realize our great potential,” Prince said.
Gordon-Reed is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University. She has won 16 book prizes, including the Pulitzer Prize in history in 2009 and the National Book Award in 2008 for The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family. Her most recent book is On Juneteenth, a memoir and history of Texas. A selected list of honors includes a Guggenheim Fellowship in the humanities, a MacArthur Fellowship, the National Humanities Medal, the Frederick Douglass Book Prize, the George Washington Book Prize and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. She is a Texas-raised historian and appears as a featured expert in Ken Burns’ recent PBS documentary The American Revolution.
– Wendy Kilmer
April 22, 2026