During the next seven weeks, students may see Civil War soldiers encamped on the Tisch Library lawn or Abraham Lincoln walking the library halls.
The traveling exhibit, "Forever Free: Abraham Lincoln's Journey to Emancipation," opens at Tufts today.
The exhibit has toured the country since fall 2003. By next February, 40 libraries will have hosted the exhibit. Next fall, the exhibit will begin a second tour - this time of 60 libraries - that will last until 2010.
The University is the only place in Massachusetts to host the exhibit.
The exhibit is made up of 150 feet of display panels on the second floor of the library. Actors in Civil War-era costumes introduced the exhibit on Community Day, Oct. 2.
The library will kick off the exhibit's opening with several programs this weekend, including a Friday night talk by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Herbert Donald, a concert on Saturday night of Civil War-era music, and a walking tour of campus on Sunday, highlighting historical spots on the Hill.
Faculty, students, and community members are preparing for more events on campus about the former president and his time.
"There are two schools of thought about his role in emancipation," according to Stephanie St. Laurence, the Tisch event chairperson.
One school, she said, sees Lincoln as instrumental in the end of slavery. The other argues "that the slaves would have been freed without him," St. Laurence said.
As part of the exhibit, Civil War-style encampment demonstrations will take place on the library lawn Oct. 16 and 25. A round-table discussion about historical reenactments, lead by Anthropology Professor Cathy Stanton, will take place on the day of the second encampment demonstration.
Stanton has researched not only the recreation of specific events, but also "living history" events that try to bring back the experience of what it was like to live in the past.
Other events for the exhibit will focus more on drawing lessons from history that apply to the present. English Professor Liz Ammons will lead a discussion about Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and its effects on society Nov. 16.
"We are at a time now where we face many, many big problems that humans have created," Ammons said. She mentioned racism and environmental devastation in the United States. "There are really important questions about how to make change. So I want to think about Stowe and "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and learn from [that]."
The idea of bringing the exhibit to Tufts originated three years ago when Tisch staff got an e-mail calling for applications from the American Library Association's Public Programs Office.
Proposals for the grant had to show that a significant number of qualified scholars would participate in the exhibit and that the show would be accessible to the community.
Once Tufts was selected as the only location in the state, inquiries from within the University and from non-Tufts scholars poured in.
"Everyone was interested in being a part, in some way," St. Laurence said, "no matter who we contacted in the community."
Eighteen different Tufts departments are involved in some aspect of the exhibit, as well as faculty members from Boston College, Boston University, Brandeis University and Yale University.
The University of Minnesota, Southwest Missouri State University, the State University of New York at Buffalo, the City University of New York, and Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania also hosted the exhibit.
The exhibit's major sponsors are the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Library Association, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in New York, and the Huntington Library in California.
It is free and open to the public.
