Our great experiment in government by the people depends on the capacity to learn, to reinvent ourselves, and to dare to change our system when it fails to meet the needs of our diverse nation. The framers of our Constitution, despite their prejudice against People of Color, women, LGBTQIA, and other oppressed minorities, designed a system capable of making these necessary evolutions when thrust ahead on the grassroots efforts of an educated, engaged citizenry. The Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History and Education strives to meet people of all backgrounds, ages, and experiences through our programs, research, and services in the resolute belief that personal change and evolution is rooted in education. Our namesake lived this experience, learning his way from opposition to Civil Rights for Black Americans and an aggressor to people of color to confiding in national leaders of the African American movement and his own endorsement of our nation's first Black president. The Byrd Center strives every day to engage people in all age groups through educational outreach programs designed not only to inform people of our history but also to promote the rights to which all Americans are entitled to exercise. Upon those rights, employed through informed civic action, we can use our Constitution to make this nation more equitable and just for all people. We strive to embody what President Barack Obama declared the "quintessential American quality:" "a capacity to change, a capacity to learn, a capacity to listen, a capacity to be made more perfect." 

Addressing the difficult history of race in America

Throughout the nearly two and a half centuries since the Declaration of Independence declared all men to be endowed with certain, inalienable rights, Black Americans have faced systemic racism in public policy and cultural oppression. The Byrd Center traces this history in programs