Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory

History Forum: Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory
Minnesota History Center, St. Paul MN

Date: March 9, 2013
Time: 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.
Fee: $14/$10 MHS members.
Reservations: required, call 651-259-3015 or register online

Join historian David Blight, Yale University, for a discussion of the post war years. In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, new black citizens began reaching eagerly for the freedom and equality promised by Emancipation. Meanwhile, white Americans strived to reunite by downplaying sectional divides, celebrating shared white sacrifice on the battlefield, and denying the presence and participation of African Americans in the war and society. When the U.S. Supreme Court freed the white supremacist killers of more than 150 black Republican militiamen in 1873, the path was set. The United States would heal without justice, and our national “reunion” would create a painful legacy that still haunts us today.

David Blight is the author of "Frederick Douglass’s Civil War," and editor of Douglass’s "Narrative" and W.E.B. Du Bois’s "Souls of Black Folk," both widely taught in college courses. Blight has appeared in several PBS films and works extensively with museums and other public history projects. His book "Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, 1863-1915," won a half-dozen prizes, including four from the Organization of American Historians (OAH). He is also a Distinguished Lecturer for OAH.

This program is made possible in part through support from the Arts, Culture and Heritage Fund, voted into law by the people of Minnesota in 2008.

For more information visit http://www.minnesotahistorycenter.org/forum