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 five-year effort to create a 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 will take 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.

“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

Events for the Lincoln Legacy Project will be presented in cooperation with several partner organizations including The Anti-Defamation League, the Atlas Performing Arts Center, the D.C. Jewish Community Center, the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the NAACP, Operation Understanding D.C. and Theater J. 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 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.

Programming for fall 2012 will center on the Washington premiere of Fly, based on the experiences of the Tuskegee Airmen. A full line-up will be announced in September 2012.

Official Media Partner: The Washington Post

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