Heads up! Civil War historian Bruce Levine will be speaking at EWU this Thursday noon and at the MAC in Spokane Thursday evening. Levine's newest book is Confederate Emancipation: Southern Plans to Free and Arm Slaves During the War. (A review of the book is here.) Levine will deliver two lectures:
"The Myth of the Black Confederate"
Thursday Oct. 2 at 12 noon
Monroe Hall 205, Cheney WA
"The Confederacy's Plan to Emancipate (and Arm) Slaves"
Thursday Oct. 2 at 6 p.m.
Eric A. Johnston Memorial Audition - Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture
2316 W. First Avenue, Spokane WA
These are important lectures. In recent years neo-confederate "heritage" groups have worked hard to refashion the public narrative of the Civil War, downplaying or dismissing entirely the central importance of slavery and racism. One of their efforts has been to argue that there were large numbers of blacks who fought on the side of the South because they just loved their Massa Lee or something. It is nonsense of course and academic historians have mostly ignored the black confederate mythology even as the neoconfederates have created websites, educational programs, and shoddy publications based on the myth. Levine is among the few historians willing to tackle the topic head-on. (For more on the topic, check out The Myth of Black Confederates tag at the Civil War Memory blog.)
This opportunity to hear a top historian is thanks to a Teaching American History grant from the U.S. Department of Education to Spokane Educational Service District 101.
(If you can't make it here is an MP3 of Levine delivering the second lecture at UC Santa Cruz.)
1 comment:
I will definitely be there, at least for the EWU lecture.
It has always been my understanding, as a student of this era, that blacks fought for the South for two main reasons: 1) They, mainly house servants, thought of their enslaving family as their own, and genuinely loved them, especially the children they looked after and practically raised; 2) No matter the intentions of the Northern Army, they saw the South as their home and Northerners as invaders and aggressors (the comparison to the current Iraq conflict are obvious here). It will be interesting what Levine has to say about this.
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