LancasterHistory presents “Revolution to Reconstruction: Pennsylvania and the Fight for Liberty & Equality.” This America250PA lecture will take place on October 7th, 2026 at the Ware Center and will feature Clint Smith, who will share insights on Pennsylvania’s central role in shaping our ideals of liberty & equality from the Revolution through Reconstruction and the notion that there is no such thing as a single American story. The event will include a Q&A portion for our audience.

Clint Smith is the author of the upcoming nonfiction book, Just Beneath the Soil (Knopf, May 2027) which explores how World War II is remembered around the world. He is also wrote the narrative nonfiction book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, which was a #1 New York Times bestseller, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the Hillman Prize for Book Journalism, the Stowe Prize, and selected by the New York Times as one of the 10 best books of 2021. With Sonja Cherry-Paul, Smith adapted How the Word Is Passed into a bestseller for young readers (Little, Brown, 2025). He is also the author of the New York Times bestselling poetry collection Above Ground and the award-winning poetry collection Counting Descent. His writing has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. In 2020, Smith was named a New America (Emerson Collective) Fellow, and in 2026 was named the inaugural fellow of the Sachs Foundation. Clint received his B.A. in English from Davidson College and a Ph.D. in Education from Harvard University. He is a staff writer at The Atlantic.