A stunning collection of stoic portraits and intimate ephemera from
the lives of Black Civil War soldiers
Though both the Union and Confederate armies excluded African American
men from their initial calls to arms, many of the men who eventually
served were black. Simultaneously, photography culture
blossomed--marking the Civil War as the first conflict to be extensively
documented through photographs. In The Black Civil War Soldier, Deb
Willis explores the crucial role of photography in (re)telling and
shaping African American narratives of the Civil War, pulling from a
dynamic visual archive that has largely gone unacknowledged.
With over seventy images, The Black Civil War Soldier contains a huge
breadth of primary and archival materials, many of which are rarely
reproduced. The photographs are supplemented with handwritten captions,
letters, and other personal materials; Willis not only dives into the
lives of black Union soldiers, but also includes stories of other
African Americans involved with the struggle--from left-behind family
members to female spies. Willis thus compiles a captivating memoir of
photographs and words and examines them together to address themes of
love and longing; responsibility and fear; commitment and patriotism;
and--most predominantly--African American resilience.
The Black Civil War Soldier offers a kaleidoscopic yet intimate
portrait of the African American experience, from the beginning of the
Civil War to 1900. Through her multimedia analysis, Willis acutely
pinpoints the importance of African American communities in the
development and prosecution of the war. The book shows how photography
helped construct a national vision of blackness, war, and bondage, while
unearthing the hidden histories of these black Civil War soldiers. In
combating the erasure of this often overlooked history, Willis asks how
these images might offer a more nuanced memory of African-American
participation in the Civil War, and in doing so, points to individual
and collective struggles for citizenship and remembrance.
