Upload Lesson Plan: The Battle of Saltville  [PDF]

This lesson plan was written by Paul LaRue and placed second in the 2010-2011 Best Lesson Plan Contest.

Find the “Battle of Saltville” Lesson Plan here.

Read more about The Best Lesson Plan contest.

Civil War Trust:  http://www.civilwar.org

Join the Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center for the opening reception of their new exhibit “We Too!The Contributions of African Americans During the Civil War.”

The issues of emancipation and military service were intertwined from the onset of the Civil War. Hear the stories of black Ohioans, the challenges that they faced and how they contributed to the war effort. The event will feature a brief program, refreshments and tours of the exhibit.

Location: National Afro-American Museum & Cultural Center, 1350 Brush Row Road, Wilberforce, OH 45384

For more information, please call 800.752.2603.

Join the Barberton Public Library for a multimedia presentation by award-winning journalist and art historian Jesse Bryant Wilder. This presentation will tell the story of the Civil War and Reconstruction years through the lens of American art, accompanied by period songs and first-hand accounts of life during this pivotal time in American history.

Location: Baberton Public Library,   602 W. Park Ave., Barberton, Ohio 44203

Sponsor: Barberton Public Library

For more information, please visit http://www.barbertonlibrary.org

Using a wide variety of disciplines, this year’s conference seeks to explore many aspects of African American involvement in the Civil War, 1861-1865. Important topics include African Americans and the abolitionist movement, African American women and life on the homefront during the war years, African American participation in the military, and African American life and politics during the Reconstruction Era, 1865-1877.   In addition, recent popular and scholarly debates over causes of the Civil War will be explored.

In 1861 as the United States stood at the brink of Civil War, people of African descent, both slave and free, waited with a watchful eye. They understood that a war between the Union military and the Confederacy might bring about the “day of jubilee” and the destruction of slavery. When the Confederate troops fired upon Fort Sumter on April 12 1861 and hostilities began, President Abraham Lincoln maintained that the paramount cause was to preserve the Union, not to end the practice of slavery. Frederick Douglass, the most prominent African American leader, declared that regardless of Union intentions, the war would bring an end to the South’s “peculiar institution.”

Over the next four years, the four million people of African descent in the United States sought to prove Frederick Douglass right. Free and enslaved African Americans rallied around the Union flag and the cause of freedom. From the cotton and tobacco fields of the South to the small towns and big cities of the North, nearly 200,000 black men joined the Grand Army of the Republic and took up arms to destroy slavery and the Confederacy. The ASALH convention theme for 2011 honors the role of people of African descent in ending slavery and preserving the Union.

Given the recent political and academic debates about the legacy of the Civil War, papers and panels offering interdisciplinary analyses and perspectives of the continuing legacy of the Civil War in American and African American life are particularly welcome.

The deadline for the submission of panel and paper proposals is 30 April 2011. All proposals must be submitted electronically to ASALH through the All Academic online system. Proposals should include title of the paper or panel, author(s) and affiliation(s), an abstract of paper or panel of 200-250 words, and all contact information. Only panel proposal submitters will receive complimentary audio/visual equipment on a first come first serve basis.

ASALH Call for Papers 2011

For complete panels that are submitted by March 30, day and time preferences will be given on a first come, first served basis. Please refer to the FAQ page for what constitutes a complete panel.

For information, please visit the ASALH website.

Kara Walker: Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated)

“I wanted to make work where the viewer wouldn’t walk away; he would either giggle nervously, get pulled into history, into fiction, into something totally demeaning and possibly very beautiful.”   -Kara Walker

Courtesy of the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., Cincinnati Art Museum

For over a decade, Kara Walker’s work has evoked and satirized racial myths, slavery and gender politics. Along the way, Kara also imbeds her brand of cynical or sarcastic humor through the use of exaggerated caricatures to emphasize elements like race and positions of power.

Her trademark silhouettes appropriate the technique of eighteenth and nineteenth century cut-paper silhouettes, once considered woman’s art.   In Walker’s hands, silhouettes create raucous figural processionals.

For this portfolio of fifteen prints, Walker takes as her point of departure the illustrated Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War, published in 1866. Walker made photo offset lithograph enlargements of wood engravings from the two-volume original. She then overlaid these blow-ups with her solid black screen-printed silhouettes.

“…I am too aware of my overzealous imagination interfering in the basic facts of history. A collusion of fact and fiction that has informed me probably since day one…” -Kara Walker

Throughout her works, an interweaving of Southern antebellum nostalgia, Civil War iconography, and black racist stereotypes highlights the pervasive influence of Southern racial history and the history of black representation upon contemporary American culture.   By distilling her images into black and white, she draws her viewers into the murky waters of the history of African Americans on this continent.

“I think my work sort of mimics the past, but it’s all about the present….some great artist in the past, Courbet or somebody, said there’s no historical art   that isn’t about present…” -Kara Walker

Kara Walker was born in Stockton, California in 1969. In 1991, she earned her BFA at the Atlanta College of Art where she developed an interest in southern antebellum nostalgia, and in 1994, earned her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Her work has appeared in solo and group exhibitions in the United States and abroad. Notable solo venues include: The Walker Art Center, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the Hammer in Los Angeles. Her work has also been presented at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Tate Liverpool in England.   She has received the Deustche Bank Prize and was the youngest recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship. Walker currently teaches at Columbia University and lives and works in New York City.

http://www.cincinnatiartmuseum.org/absolutenm/templates/ArtTempExhibitions.aspx?articleid=931&zoneid=65

It is an honor and a pleasure that Cincinnati Civil War Round Table member Kris Teters returns to the podium after being away from our group for several years.

As part of the nationwide effort to commemorate the Civil War Centennial (1961-1965), the Alabama Civil War Centennial Commission was created in 1959. With historian Albert B. Moore as its executive director, the Commission led numerous county commissions in organizing commemorative activities throughout the state during the centennial period. A distinctive rhetoric of romance and unity emerged in these commemorative exercises. During the course of the centennial, caucasian Alabamians constantly advanced a romantic version of their past, in which they could safely venerate the heroic virtues of their ancestors and the society that produced them. The historical issues of slavery and emancipation were shoved aside, for they did not fit into, and in fact, undermined this romantic Lost Cause narrative of the Southern past that white Alabamians were carefully constructing. Alongside this romance, there was a clear rhetoric of unity that called for North and South to rally together behind their common Civil War heritage.

Yet, just as Alabamians were observing the Civil War centennial, African-Americans were struggling to gain their civil rights. The Alabama Civil War centennial’s rhetoric of romance was utilized as a weapon and defense mechanism against this struggle. As African-Americans challenged white Alabamians’ social order in every way, the centennial allowed caucasian Alabamians to immerse themselves in a romantic past where the world seemed harmonious, perfect, and just. In short, romance allowed them to escape to an ideal past, in which they could better weather the storm of the present.

Mr. Teters’ presentation investigates these and other aspects of the intriguing Civil War Centennial in Alabama. Perhaps the audience will see just how easily history can be used (or abused) to justify a political, economic, or social platform.

Location:   The Drake Center, West Pavilion, Cincinnati, OH

For more information:   http://www.cincinnaticwrt.org/canister_list.html

The Akron Art Museum is presenting selections from Jacob Lawrence’s celebrated screen prints in “The Legend of John Brown” until February 14, 2010.

Location: Akron Art Museum, One South High, Akron, OH 44308

This fall marks the 150th anniversaries of John Brown’s anti-slavery raid on Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, and his December 2, 1859 execution. To commemorate this famous Akron resident, the Akron Art Museum presents selections from Jacob Lawrence’s celebrated print series The Legend of John Brown. Lawrence, one of the most significant American artists of the 20th century, was also the first African American to depict the story of the controversial white abolitionist.

Lawrence’s screenprints, which are owned by the museum, will be joined by related images and artifacts from the Summit County Historical Society and the Akron-Summit County Public Library Special Collections Division. A Northerner, Brown (1800-1859) worked on farms in Northeast Ohio before moving in 1844 into a two-room cottage across from the mansion of Simon Perkins, Jr., for whom he worked in the wool trade. Brown’s religious convictions led him to oppose slavery. He regularly housed slaves moving through the Underground Railroad in his Akron home. Now part of the Summit County Historical Society, it houses a permanent display about Brown’s life.

http://www.akronartmuseum.org/exhibitions/details.php?unid=1272

Open House Event honoring volunteer work at the Harriet Beecher Stowe House, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The House was also the home of General James Beecher, a Civil War general who commanded the first African-American troops from the South.

Harriet Beecher Stowe House
2950 Gilbert Ave.
Cincinnati, OH 45206
513-751-0651

http://www.harrietbeecherstowehouse.org

“Oberlin’s Sable Arm: Black Ohioans and the Civil War”

Dr. Kelly D. Selby, a Walsh University assistant professor of history, discusses Oberlin-area African-Americans’ participation in the war and the effect that their service had on their lives when they returned home. The illustrated presentation takes place at Kendal at Oberlin’s Heiser Auditorium (600 Kendal Drive) and is free and open to the public.

http://www.oberlinheritage.org

Press Release

Oberlin College (Right) from the Ohio Historical Society. Mary Church Terrell (Left) Photographed by Addison N. Scurlock, circa 1920s. Library of Congress

Source:

http://www.oberlin.edu/external/EOG/OYTT/ch10.html

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