The Marquis de Lafayette is best known in America for his role in the American Revolution—from his arrival in 1777 as a nineteen-year-old volunteer to his pivotal contributions to the successful culmination of the Yorktown Campaign in 1781. What is less well known is Lafayette’s remarkable role as an advocate for human rights on three continents. This talk will take an in-depth look at Lafayette’s championship of the antislavery movement growing out of his experiences in the American Revolution and continuing throughout his life. His efforts in the years preceding the French Revolution for the restoration of civil rights to French Protestants and Jews, his friendship for Native Americans, his support for women writers and reformers, and his opposition to solitary confinement and the death penalty will all be discussed.
This presentation will be held on the first floor of the Rock Ford Barn. Due to rental event turnover, this area will open to guests at 1:45 PM. Your ticket includes admission to the Snyder Gallery and our 2025 Focus Exhibit “1825: Lafayette in Lancaster.” The Snyder Gallery is located on the second floor of the Rock Ford Barn. The Gallery closes promptly at 4 PM.
Diane Windham Shaw is Special Collections Director Emerita at Lafayette College, where she oversaw the activities of the Special Collections from 1985 to 2019 and served as College Archivist from 1987 to 2017. She holds a Master of Librarianship degree, as well as her B.A. from Emory University, where she also spent the first years of her career as an archivist. As curator of Lafayette College’s extensive collections on the Marquis de Lafayette, Shaw was a primary organizer of the College’s celebration of the 250th anniversary of Lafayette’s birth in 2007, and as part of this celebration, she collaborated with Mount Vernon on an exhibition commemorating the friendship between Lafayette and George Washington, “A Son and His Adoptive Father.” In 2016-17, she served as co-curator for the exhibition “‘A True Friend of the Cause’: Lafayette and the Antislavery Movement” at the Grolier Club in New York City. She has long been active with the American Friends of Lafayette and currently serves as the AFL curator.