In May 2008, The May 20th Society welcomed Ken Burns. The Society sponsored a youth and adult lecture series featuring Burns, sponsored the annual May 20th Society free-to-the-public MecDec noon observance and the Capt. Jack Bike Ride.

Ken Burns is an American director and producer of documentary films known worldwide. Among his most notable productions are The Civil War (1990), Baseball (1994), Jazz (2001) and The War (2007).

Burns’s documentaries have been nominated for two Academy Awards (Brooklyn Bridge in 1982 and The Statue of Liberty in 1986) and six of his documentaries have been nominated for one or more Emmy Awards. He won three Emmy Awards for The Civil War, for Baseball and for Unforgivable Blackness.

Burns's film series The Civil War is a masterpiece. Narrated by Pulitzer Prize winning author David McCullough, Burns filled in many other roles, serving as director, producer, co-writer, chief cinematographer, music director, and executive producer of The Civil War. The series has been honored with more than 40 major film and television awards, including two Emmy Awards, two Grammy Awards, Producer of the Year Award from the Producers Guild of America, People's Choice Award, Peabody Award, duPont-Columbia Award, D.W. Griffith Award, and the $50,000 Lincoln Prize, among dozens of others. The nine episodes explore the Civil War through personal stories and photos that create a very different kind of experience from watching nearly any other modern movie today. During the creation of the movie Burns filmed thousands of archived photographs. This resulted in the coining of the aforementioned term the “Ken Burns Effect”. The Civil War has been viewed by more than 40 million people.

The May 20th Society was both thrilled and honored to welcome this dynamic talented filmmaker and historian as our guest and lecturer at The May 20th Society 2008 Speaker Series.