If you happen to be in or around University Park, PA, you may be interested in a series of three free lectures relating to slavery and the American Civil War. The lectures will be given by James O. Horton, the Benjamin Banneker professor emeritus of American studies and history at George Washington University and historian emeritus of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History at the 110 Business Building at University Park.

The three lectures and their dates are:

• 7 p.m. Oct. 21, “Race and Slavery: America’s Great Contradiction.”
• 7 p.m. Oct. 22, “The 1850s: America’s Most Critical Decade”
• 4 p.m. Oct. 23, “America’s Memory of Slavery and the Civil War”