Join us for the 2024 Earle C. Clements Lecture-Symposium featuring Donald A. Ritchie, historian emeritus of the United States Senate. Ritchie will reflect on a nearly 40-year career in the Senate Historical Office and draw on his book, Washington’s Iron Butterfly: Bess Clements Abell, An Oral History, co-written with the late Terry L. Birdwhistell. 

The lecture will be held in the Great Hall of the Special Collections Research Center at 5pm on Thursday, September 19. The event is free and open to the public. Copies of Washington’s Iron Butterfly will be available for purchase, and a book signing will be held after the lecture.

RSVPs are appreciated. 

As Senate historian, Ritchie conducted the Senate oral history project and edited the transcripts of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s investigations. He is the author of numerous books, including Press Gallery: Congress and the Washington Correspondents, which won the Richard W. Leopold Prize of the Organization of American Historians. He received the Forrest C. Pogue Award for his significant contributions to the field of oral history.

The annual Clements Lecture-Symposium honors the legacy of Earle C. Clements, who served as governor of Kentucky and represented the state in the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate. The event is made possible by the generous gifts of Clements’ daughter, Bess Clements Abell, her husband Tyler Abell, and their two sons, Dan and Lyndon.