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Why America is Just Now Learning to Love Thaddeus Stevens - Anita - 12-20-2023 06:58 PM
Excellent article by Tracy Schorn including plans for the opening of Thaddeus Stevens and Lydia Hamilton Smith Center for History and Democracy in 2025.
Today Thaddeus Stevens is finally getting his due. In Gettysburg, a scrappy band of citizens erected a bronze statue of Stevens in front of the Adams County courthouse in April 2022. But the biggest honor is yet to come for Stevens and his companion Lydia Hamilton Smith, when, in the city of Lancaster, the preservationist group Lancaster History will open the Thaddeus Stevens and Lydia Hamilton Smith Center for History and Democracy in 2025. Designed by the same firm that built the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., the $25 million complex is a paean to Stevens’ life’s work. The site will also showcase regional heroes of the Underground Railroad, including the work of Smith, a freeborn woman with African American heritage who spent 21 years of her life as Stevens’ house manager and confidante (and, some speculate, his common-law wife). The center will celebrate their shared work helping freedom seekers—and their rare working relationship of close respect across color and gender lines.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/america-just-now-learning-love-thaddeus-stevens-best-hated-man-us-history-180983235/?