On Tuesday, October 15, 2019, Gilder Lehrman Institute Trustee David McCullough gave a book talk at Trinity School, a Gilder Lehrman Affiliate School in New York City. The auditorium was packed full with more than 240 students and teachers from schools across New York City. McCullough’s new book, The Pioneers, was given to all the students attending. 

In September 2018, the Gilder Lehrman Institute discovered that the creator of a document at the center of the civil rights movement in Birmingham, Alabama, was now living in New York. We brought the Reverend C. Herbert Oliver to the Gilder Lehrman Collection to talk about his experiences in Birmingham in the 1960s. Over the course of the next year, we continued to find ways to highlight the Reverend Oliver’s visit on our blog.

On October 2, 2019, in the Grand Ballroom at the Yale Club in New York City, Alysha Butler of McKinley Technology High School in Washington DC was presented with the 2019 National History Teacher of the Year Award.

John Zingale 2019 Washington Teacher of the Year and Finalist for National History Teacher of the Year

Alysha Butler is a social studies teacher at McKinley Technology High School in Washington, DC. She won the 2019 Daughters of the American Revolution Outstanding Teacher of United States History Award, was a 2019 GrantEd Recipient, and was selected as the 2010 Miramar High School Teacher of the Year. Along with the nine other finalists for the award, she was asked informal questions by the Gilder Lehrman Institute.

On September 25, 1981, Sandra Day O’Connor became the first female Supreme Court Justice in the United States when she was sworn in by Chief Justice Warren Burger. She had been nominated by President Ronald Reagan. She retired in 2006.