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African American Battlefields of the Civil War: Contemporary Photography by William Earle Williams
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On view through September 14, 2008 at the Caroline Wiess Law Building
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William Earle Williams, Earthworks, Fort Pillow, Tennessee, 1999
Collection of the artist
© William Earle Williams
African American men served in both the American Revolution and the War of 1812. But in 1861, in the first months of the Civil War, blacks in the North who tried to enlist in the Union Army were turned away. Undeterred, they continued to organize and drill in the expectation the law would change.
Their hope came true on January 1, 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring "all persons held as slaves . . . forever free." Eventually, more than 180,000 African American soldiers—both freed slaves and free men from the North—fought in 175 regiments, accounting for a tenth of all Union troops. Yet few memorials or historical plaques mark their contributions.
In 1995, American photographer William Earle Williams set out to celebrate these unsung heroes by creating a comprehensive pictorial record of important sites where black troops fought. This exhibition presents a selection of prints from a larger series, which is published in a book available in the museum´s Hirsh Library.
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