The Center fosters improved understandings of the role of slavery, anti-slavery, and the lasting harms of slavery in the functioning of the modern world. Through fellowships, workshops, public programs, and digital resources, the Gilder Lehrman Center supports scholarship, public history, and public education.
To foster this understanding, the Center offers a variety of programs, including:
Visiting residential research fellowships
Annual international conference
Lectures, forums, and workshops
Frederick Douglass Book Prize, an award for the most outstanding book in English on the subject of slavery, resistance, or abolition across time and all nations
Professional development workshops for high school and middle school teachers
Accessible online databases of historical documents
Annual working group interdisciplinary forum that brings together selected scholars to investigate specific themes related to slavery
Other collaborative efforts with local, statewide, national, and international institutions to promote public education about slavery and its destruction