Lanterns & Luminaries
Celebrating 300 years
of Active Citizens
Thursday, April 20, 2023, 6:30 – 9:30pm
Old North Church @ 193 Salem Street, Boston, MA 02113
Honoring Annette Gordon-Reed, Pulitzer Prize winning historian and American law professor
Spark Change. Make History.
Old North Church is turning 300 this year, and you’re invited to the big celebration! Lanterns & Luminaries is a special evening of commemoration and inspiration with our friends and supporters. Guests are greeted with a colonial fife and drum corps followed by a spirited performance of the poem “Paul Revere’s Ride,” the Third Lantern Award keynote address by Annette Gordon-Reed, and a lively reception with lantern signals lighting up the sky.
Annette Gordon-Reed is the author of six books including Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy and The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family. She is a recipient of the National Humanities Medal and a MacArthur Fellowship, also known as the MacArthur “Genius Award.”
Lanterns & Luminaries is the signature annual fundraiser for the nonprofit Old North Illuminated. Tickets are on sale now. Sponsorship packages, which include a special pre-event reception, are also available. Contact jfishman@oldnorth.com with questions.
Old North Illuminated, formerly the Old North Foundation, is a secular 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization working to inspire active citizenship and courageous, compassionate leadership by interpreting and preserving the Old North Church & Historic Site.
Sponsors
Gold
Anne Bailey Berman and Roger Berman
Meet Boston
Allen Snyder
Silver
Jeff and Kristen Bray
Karen Bressler and Scott Epstein
Nancy Csaplar
Susan and Charles Eddy
Tim Ostrander / Ayco Goldman Sachs
Madeleine Rodriguez and Francisco Morales
Twelve Points Business Advisors
Bronze
The Bigelow Family
Citizens Bank
Jonathan Chu and Maryann Brink
Matt Conti
Knollmeyer Building Corp.
Hank and Patricia Kucheman
Jillian and Andrew McGrath
Murray Masonry & More, Corp.
Gordon and Barbara Russell
Host Committee
Jonathan Chu, Co-Chair
Madeleine Rodriguez, Co-Chair
Kabria Baumgartner
Karen Bressler and Scott Epstein
State Senator Lydia Edwards*
Ellen Hume and John Shattuck
Angela Johnson
Hank and Patricia Kucheman
Rashaun Martin
Jillian and Andrew McGrath
State Representative Aaron Michlewitz*
Ann Moritz
Laura Moruzzi
Gordon and Barbara Russell
Allen Snyder
Tommy Welch & Karla Torres-Welch
*Honorary Host Committee Member
About Out Honoree
Annette Gordon-Reed is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard. Gordon-Reed won sixteen book prizes, including the Pulitzer Prize in History in 2009 and the National Book Award in 2008, for The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family. In addition to articles and reviews, her other works include Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy, Vernon Can Read! A Memoir, a collaboration with Vernon Jordan, Race on Trial: Law and Justice in American History, a volume of essays that she edited, Andrew Johnson and, with Peter S. Onuf, “Most Blessed of the Patriarchs”: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination. Her most recent book is On Juneteenth. Gordon-Reed was the Vyvyan Harmsworth Visiting Professor of American History at the University of Oxford (Queens College) 2014-2015. Between 2010 and 2015, she was the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. She was the 2018-2019 President of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic. She is the current President of the Ames Foundation. A selected list of her honors includes a fellowship from the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, a Guggenheim Fellowship in the humanities, a MacArthur Fellowship, the National Humanities Medal, the National Book Award, the Frederick Douglass Book Prize, the George Washington Book Prize, and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. Gordon-Reed served as a member of the Board of Trustees of Dartmouth College from 2010 to 2018. She was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011 and was a member of the Academy’s Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences. In 2019, she was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society.
More 300th Celebrations
As Old North Church celebrates its 300th year, both Old North Illuminated and the Old North Church congregation are holding special events throughout the year!
The Lantern Service
On the evening of April 16, the Old North congregation and the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts will commemorate the church’s founding in 1723 and role in American history with the Lantern Service. The guest speaker and honoree will be the Most Reverend Michael B. Curry, Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church. The Lantern Service promises to be a stirring and inspirational evening of song and rededication, culminating in the lighting of Old North’s steeple lanterns. On the morning of the 16th, Bishop Curry will also be the preacher at the 11am Festival Choral Eucharist. Learn more.
An Original Play
In the summer, Old North Illuminated will host an original play staged at the Old North Church. Set on the eve of the American Revolution, the play will center on a conversation between three men: Captain John Pulling, Jr. (a Patriot who hung one of the lanterns in Old North’s steeple), the Rev. Mather Byles, Jr. (the Loyalist rector at the church who was being fired), and Cato (a Black man enslaved by Rev. Byles). The play will run throughout the summer several nights a week. Read an interview with the playwright, Patrick Gabridge.
Digital Speaker Series
Old North Illuminated is continuing its Digital Speaker Series, where authors, professors, and other experts join us on Zoom for fascinating lectures and conversations. To mark the 300th anniversary of Old North as a faith community and church, this year’s Digital Speaker Series includes talks that touch on the ways that religion has shaped history and look at how religious practice has reflected the changing times — and changing community. See our upcoming events.