Cultural Spotlight
Miami remembers Lincoln
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| The Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. |
Miami Dade College and several other South Florida organizations and individuals are leading the community in honoring the legacy of the 16th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln.
The city will celebrate the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth with music, art and public dialogue, all presented in collaboration with the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. The commission chose Miami as one of 11 locations in the U.S. to hold its town hall series exploring what progress has been made on Lincoln’s “unfinished work.”
When the series comes to Miami on Nov. 1, a panel of local leaders and scholars will address “Lincoln, Miami and the American Dream” during a Socratic dialogue on the lessons of Lincoln’s life and words for Greater Miami.
Held at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, the event will feature an address from noted scholar Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr., the director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. Gates will discuss the recently published Lincoln on Race & Slavery, which he compiled and edited.
The wind ensemble of the New World School of the Arts and the Ambassador Chorale of Florida Memorial University will perform music of the Lincoln era as well as a segment of Aaron Copeland’s Lincoln Portrait, with narration by Alonzo Mourning.
Following the town hall, MDC will host a reception at the Freedom Tower that will feature food and refreshments from the Lincoln era. The Freedom Tower is also the site of a special exhibition of Lincoln memorabilia on loan from the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich. The exhibition runs through Nov. 7.
— Gariot P. Louima