Feb 5
6:30PM – 9:00PM
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America/New_York
GLC Screening and Talk-Back: Civil War Epic ‘The Gray House’
What does it take to move from page to screen? As a mode of public engagement with historical topics, what are the unique opportunities and challenges of historic drama?
Thursday, February 5, 2026
6:30—9:00pm
Yale University, Luce Hall Auditorium, 34 Hillhouse Avenue, New Haven, CT 06511
Screening of two episodes
Talk-back: Public Historian Christy Coleman in conversation with:
Ben Vereen (Emmy nominee actor)
Lori McCreary (Gray House producer; CEO and co-founder of Morgan Freeman’s production company Revelations Entertainment)
Join the Gilder Lehrman Center for an exciting screening and talk-back featuring “The Gray House,” a Civil War epic about a network of female spies who help turn the tide of the war. The drama focuses on the true story of a group of unsung women, a Virginia socialite, her mother, a formerly enslaved sister-in-arms, and the city’s most notorious courtesan. They operate deep inside the corridors of Confederate power and transform an underground railroad into an effective underground spy network, risking life and liberty.
Produced by Kevin Costner and Morgan Freeman, directed by Roland Joffe, and starring Mary-Louise Parker (The West Wing), Daisy Head (Harlots), Amethyst Davis (Kindred) and Ben Vereen (Roots), the eight-part series will stream on Prime in early 2026.
Christy S. Coleman began working as a living-history interpreter at Colonial Williamsburg while in high school and recognized how museums can help people appreciate the complexity of history beyond heritage and memory. She has held leadership roles at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, in Detroit, and the American Civil War Museum, in Richmond, where she oversaw development of its inclusive and complex interpretation of the Civil War. As co-chair of Richmond's Monument Avenue Commission, she guided often-contentious conversations about how to understand the monuments that memorialized the Lost Cause. Since 2019 Coleman has served as executive director of the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, a state agency that operates two museums that explore the 17th-century confluence of American Indian, European, and African cultures and the American Revolution. Throughout a career spanning more than 35 years, she has been a tireless advocate for the power of museums, narrative correction, diversity, and inclusiveness.
On Campus — 34 Hillhouse Avenue
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