A national touring exhibit arrived at Central Kitsap High School Monday, just in time for the school to celebrate Black History Month along with the rest of the Central Kitsap School District.

The exhibit, Free at Last: A History of the Abolition of Slavery in America, was developed by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and will be on display at the CKHS library through Feb. 27.

The exhibition, which includes a panel exhibit, a video and interpretive and educational materials that trace the debate over slavery from the framing of the Constitution until its abolition during the Civil War, will be available for public viewing from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 17 and from 5:30 p.m. to 6:15 p.m. on Feb. 25. CKHS students will serve as docents for the exhibit during those public viewings.

The exhibit is organized into six thematic sections: The Founding Era; Slave Resistance; Slavery and the Law; Abolition; Abraham Lincoln and Emancipation; and African Americans in the Civil War. It illuminates shades of opinion and ambiguities within the ranks of the famous and ordinary, free and slave, men and women, who came to see slavery as incompatible with the ideals upon which the nation was founded.