With malice toward none, with charity for all
The Lincoln Legacy Project
From Intolerance toward Equality

In Fall of 2011, Ford’s Theatre launched the Lincoln Legacy Project, a multi-year effort to create dialogue in our nation’s capital around the issues of tolerance, equality and acceptance. Each fall, through a series of cornerstone theatre productions, educational programs and special events, Ford’s takes a closer look at racial and religious intolerance, social injustice and civil rights in American history and contemporary society. Through a diversity of programming, the Lincoln Legacy Project is designed to encourage people of differing viewpoints to engage in meaningful and respectful dialogue about tolerance and understanding.

2013 Programming: September 27-October 27, 2013
The 2013 Lincoln Legacy Project will center on a new production of The Laramie Project, a deeply complex portrait of a community’s response to the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a young gay man living in Laramie, Wyoming. In a series of poignant reflections, the residents of Laramie react to the hate crime and surrounding media storm with anger, bewilderment and sorrow. The play portrays the seismic and deeply personal impact Matthew’s death had on this small town while also demonstrating the power of the human spirit to triumph over bigotry and violence. Fifteen years later, Matthew Shepard’s story still reverberates, urging us on with its clarion call to confront the destructive power of bullying and hate, in all forms.

In conjunction with the play, Ford’s will present four free Monday night panel discussions including a conversation with Judy Shepard, and two staged readings of The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later, an epilogue exploring what life in Laramie tells us about life in America 10 years later. A complete programming schedule for this year’s Lincoln Legacy Project, including events of our Legacy Project partners, will be announced in September 2013.

Partners and Supporters
Events for The Lincoln Legacy Project will be presented in cooperation with several partner organizations including the Matthew Shepard Foundation, The Trevor Project, Sexual Minority Youth Assistance League, Facing History and Ourselves, Not in Our Town, Split This Rock, Teaching for Change, the Anti-Defamation League, Southern Poverty Law Center, the DC Center, the Human Rights Campaign, Tectonic Theater Project, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and PFLAG - Metro D.C. Chapter.

Previous year's partners include the Atlas Performing Arts Center, East Coast Chapter of the Tuskegee Airmen Inc., the DCJCC, Jewish Film Festival, the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington, the Montford Point Marine Association, the NAACP, Operation Understanding D.C., Theater J and the Veterans History Project.

The Lincoln Legacy Project is made possible with support from: Ronald O. Perelman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings Inc., Founding Sponsor; The Pew Charitable Trusts; and the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation, Harold Holzer, Chairman. Funded in part by the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, an agency supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Official Media Partner: The Washington Post

Background
“If there is one aspect of Abraham Lincoln’s legacy that has particular resonance today as a lasting example of the enduring light he shed on American ideals, it lies in his qualities of tolerance and understanding. Lincoln carved an entire administration out of differing and even opposing viewpoints, leading an agenda that called for reconciliation towards those who fought body and soul to destroy the Union he represented. Issues of tolerance, equality and acceptance are as much an issue today as they were in Lincoln’s time, and we hope that by creating a safe space to dialogue about these issues that we can better understand each other and our shared world.” –Paul R. Tetreault, director, Ford’s Theatre

Photo of Lincoln courtesy of Ford’s Theatre National Historic Site.