The Reeder Endowment in History

YSU joins in the celebration as the United States observes its 250th birthday! The Reeder Endowment is the primary sponsor of YSU’s 250 celebration, including a variety of special events that will be held over the 2026-2027 calendar year. Check the website for more information!

The festivities kicked off on January 9, with “Tavern Talk: An Evening with George Washington.” George Washington interpreter Curt Radabaugh gave a wonderful, first-presentation about Washington’s service in the Continental Army. Meanwhile, guests enjoyed the “George”–an authentic beer recipe recorded by George Washington and brewed special for the event by Noble Creature Wild Ales and Lager.

The fall semester was a busy one! Reeder programming got off to a slow start due to changes in state laws governing guest speakers on campus. Still, we welcomed Andrew Och in November. Och is an author and award-winning television and multimedia producer. His presentation, “First Ladies Man,” was an interactive lecture focusing on the roles played by First Ladies in wartime.

In December, the Reeder endowment supported a student bus trip to the annual Antietam Memorial Illumination. During this special and awe-inspiring event, the battlefield is lit by 23,000 candles–one for each casualty in the bloodiest single-day battle of the American Civil War. Students enjoyed a guided tour of the battlefield, as well as a side trip to Harpers Ferry National Historical Park.

I just returned from a summer lecture tour across Missouri, giving public presentations for the Civil War Roundtable of St. Louis and the U.S. Grant National Historic Site. I was also invited to speak at Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield as part of the “This Hallowed Ground” speaker series sponsored by the American Battlefield Trust. The American Battlefield Trust is a national non-profit that seeks to educate the public about America’s military history and why it matters. My talk, “United in Death: The Remarkable History of the Springfield National and Confederate Cemeteries,” engaged park visitors in the stories of people and events that saved places hallowed by the sacrifices of soldiers and civilians alike during and after the Civil War. In this case, I shared the remarkable history of the first and only Confederate cemetery to be adopted by the US government and explained how and why that happened.

On April 5, 32 YSU students set off for the History Club’s annual student trip. This year, they revisited Gettysburg National Military Park. The trip is sponsored by the Darling and Reeder Endowments in History, which provide a charter bus and a private tour of the park with a licensed battlefield guide. This year’s guide led the students to Culp’s Hill, where a Mahoning Valley regiment fought.

The Reeder and Darling Endowments in History partnered to sponsor a special guest lecture by Dr. Linda Gordon, a pioneering historian of women’s and social history. Her lecture, “The Much Misunderstood Women’s Liberation Movement,” reviewed the origins and goals of the movement and reflected on its legacies today. Dr. Gordon is a two-time recipient of the distinguished Bancroft Prize for history.

We are pleased to announce that the annual Reeder Distinguished Lecture in Nineteenth-Century History will be held the evening of April 17, 2025. This year’s lecture will be delivered by Dr. Joseph M. Beilein, Jr., and is entitled “From Ohio Schoolmaster to Missouri Bushwhacker: The Strange Civil War of William Clarke Quantrill.”

Dr. Joseph M. Beilein, Jr., is a professor of history at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College where he teaches history courses on the Civil War, Revolutionary America, Gender, and Military History. He has authored or edited five books including A Man By Any Other Name: William Clarke Quantrill and the Search for American Manhood (2023) and Bushwhackers: Guerrilla Warfare, Manhood, and the Household in Civil War Missouri (2016).

With the support of the Reeder endowment, Drs. Fluker and Lease led the YSU History Club on a free trip to the Cleveland Museum of Art where students spent a full day exploring. Favorite exhibits included “Imagination in the Age of Reason” and “Arts of Maghreb.”

In 1924, the Ku Klux Klan was gaining strength across the Midwest. But on November 1, the people of Niles, Ohio, organized a massive protest against the Klan. As the YSU history program observes the 100th anniversary of this protest, it is pleased to welcome Dr. Linda Gordon for a special lecture on the history of the rise and fall of the KKK.

Dr. Gordon’s lecture, “When the Ku Klux Klan was a Mass Movement” will be held Nov. 1 at 6:00 pm, at the Youngstown Historical Center of Industry and Labor. It is free and open to the public.

For more information on the Niles protest, see p. 46 of Echoes.

Dr. Linda Gordon  is the Florence Kelley Professor of History and University Professor of the Humanities at New York University and two-time recipient of the esteemed Bancroft Prize in History. She is the author of dozens of scholarly articles and of multiple books including The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition (2017).