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.