“Lifting Burdens: How Abraham Lincoln Freed Slaves and America” will be the topic of remarks by local resident and Harvard graduate Robert D. Storey.

Storey, a retired corporate attorney, lay historian and a former trustee of the St. Augustine Historical Society and the Kresge Foundation, is also a former Director of Proctor & Gamble, Verizon, May Department Stores and the Lincolnville Courier-Journal. He is also the former chairman of the Board of Trustees of Cleveland State University.

At Flagler, he will discuss why and how Lincoln decided to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, the opposition to it, the Proclamation’s ultimate significance in the contest of the Civil War and how it led to the removal of an issue that had burdened America for nearly 90 years.

On a prior occasion, Storey was the commencement speaker at Tri-State University (now Trine University) in Angola, Indiana where he spoke on the positive and negative aspects of computer technology. Students and others, he cautioned, should use computers not only wisely, but well.

Storey is presently writing a book entitled A White Man’s Country: America’s war on Red, Black and Brown People, 1776-1876.