 Greetings from the National Archives. I'm David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to today's virtual book talk with Deborah Willis, author of The Black Civil War Soldier. Before we begin, I'd like to tell you about two upcoming programs you can view on our YouTube channel. On Friday, January 29th, at noon, Benjamin R. Justuson will discuss his book, Forgotten Legacy. Historians of long overlooked President William McKinley's cooperation with prominent African American leaders, including George Henry White, the nation's only black congressman between 1897 and 1901. Because of McKinley's dedication to the advancement of African Americans and the safeguarding of their rights as U.S. citizens, he might be considered the first civil rights president. And on Thursday, February 4th, at 1 p.m., Alice Baumgartner will tell us about her new book, South to Freedom. In the years before the Civil War, thousands of people in the South Central United States escaped slavery, not by heading north, but by crossing the southern border into Mexico. South to Freedom gives us a new perspective on antebellum America and the causes of the Civil War. The Civil War was the first large and prolonged conflict to extensively be recorded in photographs. This visual record gives us a sense of immediacy that we don't have with paintings and prints from the Revolutionary War or other earlier conflicts. We can identify individual faces and we can imagine ourselves on the actual battlefields in the aftermath of the fighting. Thousands of those images are now in the National Archives, but photos of black soldiers are rare. In her book, The Black Civil War Soldier, Deborah Willis shows us the faces of a number of black soldiers who took up arms to fight for their freedom. Using photographs and the written record, she examines not only the individual stories of the soldiers, but also the importance of African-American communities during and after the war. Deborah Willis is a university professor and chair of the Department of Photography and Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and has an affiliated appointment with the College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, and Africana Studies. Willis is the author of Envisioning Emancipation and Michelle Obama, both of which received NAACP Image Awards, as well as Posing Beauty. Now let's hear from Deborah Willis. Thank you for joining us today. Deborah Willis Thank you. Welcome and good afternoon everyone. I'm excited to be here and I thank the National Archives for this invitation to share my work and inviting me. It's really exciting to consider the work that a place where I did a lot of work in terms of research at the National Archives focusing on my topic. My topic also, it's about memory and rediscovery as well as investigating the legacy of African-American soldiers as well as women and who were teachers and nurses and to think about how photography letters and diaries form this experience. I'm going to start off with sharing my screen and which will include a talk focusing on my research and beginning here with the first image. It's the cover of the book. It's an image that celebrates but also documents the experience of image making. This is one of the photographs that I'm part of the collection that really tells the story of the experience of what it meant to be photographed and then how do we preserve that photograph through the experience of the casing of the image and the sense of bravery when we read the photograph of this soldier who's holding his gun to his chest. One of the first people who inspired me to even to think about this project and to encourage the project is the research that I found on Frederick Douglass, his words. So it was a civil war that inspired Douglass to write and speak on photography. Like many Americans, he believed that photographs and pictures greatly contributed to the succession and a war over slavery. During the civil war, Douglass wrote a number of lectures. He also had created this sense of commitment to the war and he wrote, once you the black man get upon his person the breath letter U.S., let him get an eagle on his button and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket and there's no power on earth or under earth which can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship in the United States. Finding that quote and I use it often just in terms of setting the aspect of the visuality of the experience of being photographed. Harry May Weems is also a contemporary artist who is central to my research. As we think about the missing history of these images, Harry May Weems creates this self-portrait and an antebellum dress styled with a quilt and she says, I looked and looked to see what so terrified you. She's looking at the history of images of black people that were made that denigrated and imagined black bodies as subhuman and she created this this piece in response to J.T. Zeely and Louis Agassiz's research on black bodies. Also, I just recently discovered this image of a plantation scene as it's entitled antebellum tableau by a collector by the name of Sean Nolan and it's a fascinating story as I try to place the land, place the personal experience, place the memory of the enslavement and also of the Civil War. Here we see a landowner who's in standing in the front. We see a post but the fascinating aspect of this image also is the women, the black figures in the image. We see a young woman that's straight in the back. She has a bonnet in her hand and another young girl who was actively posing as if she's sweeping the land. The experience of this and we think about dress in these images and the importance of land and family stories. This finding these images and meeting when I was researching this story I was looking for ways to tell how photography mediated with the silencing of this history by going into public and private collections to find another narrative and this is a portrait of Richard Etheridge. It's hand tinted as you could see. It's a cart of a Z and he writes a letter to his former captain, Oren Hedrick. I have the honor to tend here with my regards for the future of your welfare, trusting that in the days to come that we all get a chance to say hello and thank you again. This is an important moment because this is the exchange between a man who was born into slavery, who fought in the war and he was enlisted in the 36 U.S. colored infantry in 1863 and he worked and he fought in Petersburg, new market heights and had a relationship that was healthy with with the captain. And also one of the why I'm excited about the talk here at the National Archives is that I researched the National Archives through the pension records trying to find stories about Black soldiers and their families and their experiences. This is a portrait of Henry Brewster that's in the archives. It's probably about 1870 where his wife in 1905, Susan Brewster, sent her only photograph of her husband requesting its return and we see it still in the archive that the photograph is there in the department of interior and in the archives when she sent the letter but she's asking for the return because this is the only image that Henry was a blacksmith and a laborer and a tailor. He fought in the war. He was injured and she wrote and she had a number of affidavits proving her marriage to Brewster but also citing that he lost sight in his eye and his right eye and he had kidney problems after he left the army. She was trying to get his pension. So there are a number of letters in the pension records where black women are trying to survive after their husband's death. Unfortunately she never received his pension but her letter remains and her affidavits remain legible in terms of telling this story and visualizing that experience. We see it through this photograph of Henry Brewster who's posing in the studio. Another figure that's central to the women in the war is the Washer women. The Washer women are central to this story as we think about the experience of men who fought who also we were thinking about sanitary situations and the war where most of the men many of the men who died they died because of the experience not only of the bullet wounds but because of unsanitary conditions and the experience of Washer women who also washed the clothes of the men and the soldiers and they created try to create a safe space and sanitary space for the soldiers. Here is a woman who's unidentified and her it's in the Smithsonian's collection and she's posed with an American flag pinned to her chest with the US breast button and we see the photographer in terms of relationships as we think about the importance of how the photographer's hand is necessary in creating the importance of the image. Images that are hand tinted really give life to an image and it tells a story of one man who's unidentified here standing in front of a painted backdrop so we see the importance of art in making in history making we see the importance of art as tell it as as a narrative of telling the story of bravery when we see the American flag that is hand tinted we also see the battle battlefields we see the battlegrounds we see the instruments of war and the photographer imagines as the photographer sees himself as posing ready for war ready to fight for freedom not only for himself but for others and a photographer and a family member and also another image of a family of a soldier with his family seated with his children and knowing that this image is the central way of creating a narrative of the importance of family. Women wrote letters to their husbands and it's really as I as I tell this story I think about the experience of women who wrote to Abraham Lincoln about equal pay not only the wives and mothers but soldiers as well as they fought they understood their presence their importance and so in terms of these portraits they were central in circulating the humanity of these subjects so here this is in a private collection of of a collector Greg French and we see these two posed images one of course it's lovely as its gold highlights on the tint type and so again as the artist the photographer is using ways to enhance the story enhance the humanity of the portraits so letters such as this letter that I found it's really important to think she starts off in 1863 and she writes my dear husband I received your last letter tell and then ending up I say tell Isaac that his mother and others got got clothing that they sent so there's an exchange of community when we see this letter from Martha farewell my dear husband from your wife asking him to write soon to experience these moments of gratitude about the war but also worried about the experience of their children and other people in the community that they left this is a image of the 127th Ohio regiment later called the fifth u.s. color truth in Ohio and as they're about to go to war we see a group of people standing on the street faring bearing witness through the experience of these soldiers and in terms of the war and the importance importance of history and barb crowd hammer and I when we created and worked on the book envisioning emancipation we wanted to think about self emancipated people women who and men who are also known as curious as as runaway and this is a quote runaway ad from louis manical plantation and his papers and this is where he highlights he's a fifty dollar reward for a woman by the name of dolly and we see that he says ran away from the yard corner of jackson and brought in august georgia on the date of of seven april 1863 the woman dolly whose likeness is seen here she's 30 years of age like complexion hesitates somewhat when spoken to when spoke when spoken and with a fine set of teeth but rather good looking and not healthy so his his his letter you know implicates her her good looks that she's free that she's she ran away but she was enticed off as they said here by a white man and as research has subsequent research has shared that it could have been a union soldier it could have been her her lover so there are different stories and there's here a photograph of louis manical in south carolina portrait of susie king taylor is thinking about the aspect of susie king taylor and her diary and her book she had a she understood that soldiers desire to communicate with their loved ones and to write letters and she says i taught a great many of the comrades in company e to read and write when they were off duty nearly all were anxious to learn and also her husband also worked with her on that this is a fantastic image of in the scene in view for south carolina with a regiment as is entitled of composed of of quote in scape escapes slaves information we see the land we see the importance of this image and the rarity of space but the comportment of the pose of the of the men in uniform says a lot about the the next step where they were prepared to move forward then and i'm going to walk through some images here that that rarely we rarely see but we see in private collections and the importance of photography and how the picture gallery was a central place for the soldiers to enter saves place to create a sense of identity and to create an image of soldiers who were on a mission to create a story about the fight for freedom this is a group of soldiers and the import hudson louisiana and this is the provost marshal office in port hudson outside we see the range of people we see soldiers we see um men and women who are standing outside in terms of dress we see that some are known as as called contraband as they were seen as they're entering into a space of freedom and moving out of slavery and and these are images where we begin to see a narrative again of masculinity that countered the negative images that were presented of black people black men that had the demeaning images that circulated of black figures so we see a sense of nation building and citizenship with these images we um their images in the collection in the book of apriam lincoln with some of the generals that we know in history to an image here of nicholas biddle who is uh in from pennsylvania in pottsville pennsylvania who in 1861 is known as the first um wounded man in the great american rebellion 1861 april 18th and he was wounded in baltimore when they're a group of men company militia volunteer militia from pennsylvania they marched through the city of baltimore on their way to defend the capital in washington dc it's an important moment for to see this image because biddle who was injured he was called names and and rocks were thrown and he was hit on the head by one of the rocks and was bleeding and we can see after the war he visited photographer studio in his uniform with the handkerchief that he used to wipe the blood off of his face and so here again we see the aspect of creating identity creating a biography through the experience of being photographed in remembering as i mentioned earlier that memory personal and public is central to creating these images we have sailors um we also have journalists and in in the book when i'm when i began the research i wanted to to have firsthand accounts of soldiers as well as their letters but also journalists who wrote about the experience of witnessing the war and this is by william aates johnson prior to black people entering the war he was able to write about the experience and he was a war correspondence toward the pine and palm during the first year of the civil war and he wrote a number of amazing articles that visualize the the the union's experience and the the sense of bravery that meant what they all that meant to most of them he also talked about the loss and what happened um through this experience uh another figure alexander heritage newton and his image here this is in the collection of the viney library but he um newton also wrote about his experience in the war um and as as as well as his enslaved experience as well as helping people through the underground railroad and he says i was born under the regime of slavery a free child my mother being a free woman my father was a slave so that in my family i learned what slavery was firsthand i felt it's a cursed in my bones and i longed for an opportunity and the power to play the role of moses too on behalf of my people so in terms of that and just the poetics of his language and writing helps guide even the pose of his image as we see and he's on the left and we see that experience he also um writes about the experience of the colored orphan asylum in 1861 so we all know that during the time um this was burned down in in new york and this battle um about black people part of the black two that whites were joining the war fighting the war and blacks needed to be a part of this experience and wanted to be a part part of this experience um there was a soldier by the name of james gooding who was prince who was part of who lived in the orphanage in 1846 and so he joined the 54th mass he wrote also a letter about and books about the experience and he also wrote the experience that he had 48 letters in the new bedford mercury about the war from 1863 to 1864 images here is titled contraband and here we see the 13th mass we see women we see a woman who's pregnant we see a young woman the pregnant woman who has her arm wrapped around possibly her mother or an older woman the older woman who removes her bonnet from her head to be photographed and the range of people in this image from children to older people to nurses to men wearing suits and jackets and so we begin to see the formation of the experience of people who were seeking their freedom um this is an african-american hospital workers including the nurses in national tennessee and and this famous well documented image of of gordon who was um you know titled the scourge back and it was used by the abolitionists and there's a man in scotland who says that i found a large number of the 400 contraband examined by me as badly lacerated as a specimen represented in in this enclosed photograph so traveling through boston um this person um scottish scholar john france's cambell he actually purchases as he says a pro-lincoln political photograph and we see the text on the back of this image by um mark by the um car carol marsh um john w mercer who writes the experience about this surgeon who assisted in the take in the care of gordon so when i think about the range of experience of gordon as he entered the camp and how his image circulated and his story circulated in different ways we see that it was in the harpers weekly as a story of a typical negro fighting for his freedom as he entered the camp in ragged clothes um showing and posing these lacerated back to wearing the uniform and so when we again see the range of experience to a confederate soldier with um sergeant chandler from the 44th mississippi to sylas chandler who was his servant who was freed and then they continued to stay with the sergeant when he was wounded images of mothers and and family members and wives um their role played heavily in in the visualizing women and terra hunter writes while women asserted claims of citizen wife or soldier's wife they were not readily granted either and yet they carefully chosen self descriptions to find how they were at once vital to and undervalued by the union so this speaks a lot about how women played the role played their role and and and visualized in their experience in constructing their stories and their memory about uh using photograph is memorializing this experience images of soldiers um just a road island cart of a seat uh women again in terms of teachers as we think of harry and jacob's in her school in alexandra fulginia she is um she says i must say one word about our school and she talks about the children and the importance of the scholars in the community and she was concerned about the health of her daughter these are all significant ways of how we read images of contraband images of men who and women who were and children who were enslaved this is another image here of the smith plantation in view for south carolina images of harry and tubman and significant images of the call for uh men and women to join the war by frederick douglas so here um as i move forward and considering our time looking at the posing of the experience of the quiet moment of going into the studio here is colonel straw who was head of the 54th and we know before he left that he is posed considering the next steps and he says we have gone quietly along forming the regiment as he prepares for the war and how long it takes to get to south carolina as they prepare for the war this is an album in the smithsonian and we see that it's part of the gift of the garrison family the memory of george thompson garrison and this is an album and as i mentioned before how the soldiers also entered in studios the captains and and other servicemen created albums of of the people in their camps and here this is the outside of the album the album is bound in gold leather in terms of the goldleaf's clasp class but we see the power of images and they're they're compelled to tell me the stories to push forward to tell the story of from uh william carney with his flag in terms of his image what he used throughout his lifetime of the importance of the war in his story the narrative of history lessons as we think of portraits this portrait of charles douglas frederick douglas's son who after his father sent this the call to arms colored men called to arms that this is a way of looking at his history posing as before he enters into the war but the pose as he's prepared to fight prepared to fight with his brother louis douglas who has a number of letters in exchange with his fiance amilia and one he writes he he posed for the photographer in boston his photograph is in howard university moreland's bingar and letter collection but he says i've been in two fights and i'm unhurt um i believe we have another fight tonight he says if i survive i shall write you a long letter and then he describes the people who were wounded in from her city in upstate new york and then he writes another my dear girl i am away do not fret yourself to death oh i beg of you do not so he's also concerned about her life her concerns and his fiance he talks also about the experience of the welfare of the men on the camp he talks about the loss of the three who died in fort wagner and these are experiences that give life to the images that breathe life into the images as they weave a story about the history of the not only iconic moments but also the southern landscape and how letter writing and slave narratives were important in creating my story that i was fascinated with and here's a letter um by um Amelia she says my dear louis um i was very glad to receive yours i you know i expected to hear from you i heard that you were ill so there's and then her photograph hand tinted photograph when we began to see these experience of women um how they um envision themselves charlotte fortin's journals she has a wonderful diary of her experience when she met robert shaw and he came to take tea with us and afterwards they stayed to the shout work which was a religious meeting and he was really excited about the experience of going to a praise house to see the quote shout as she describes and she was delighted to find that he was one of the very best and most spirited that he had had um man that he had managed she says that colonel shawl looked and listened with the deepest interest and so he expects his gratitude for inviting him to the shout but as i mentioned again as we think about this is a portrait of henry stewart and his he's part of the 54th mass and he is um this is a photograph in the historical society of massachusetts um disease was the number one killer of of many of the combatants during the war and that he was a non-commissioned officer as many and stewart was actively engaged in recruiting of soldiers in the regiment he died as a disease at the regiment hospital in morris island and 27 september 1863 and his estate was paid 50 dollars so um the sad story he was only in the war less than six months and died he was a recruiter and and unfortunately the stories that that he experienced through um through the unsanitary experiences and here is a portrait of christian fleetwood um he writes that you know fleetwood he you know he was he writes that he from carol county maryland and i get excited about some of these stories because i love the fact that issued a forge cap or a kepi bearing a brass bugle above it then the new the number four a uniform coat dark blue wool uh dark blue wool and an overcoat one pair of light blue wool and trousers you know a booty two shirts a knapsack a canteen these are the and a blanket so when we see this when the soldiers were handed um these items that they could write a note up at break of dawn you know under the supervision of of the camp and the experience of what it meant so every day these little hand diaries that you can hold in your palm of your hand and write a little note about the experience they were portable they weren't large but they had they wrote he wrote about the meals and what the the pickets and what's going on up front and then um the best discovery was um jill a newmark's research on black surgeons and she had an exhibition at nih and here is a photograph of anderson abed and he was appointed an acting assistant surgeon in 1863 and he um he worked at the uh freedman's hospital which is also in the contraband hospital during the war um and so we see his photograph it was in the collection in voltimore we see another surgeon and he writes about the experience on the 14th the most eventful day event of my life occurred i drew a hundred dollars less war tax 250 for medical services rendered to the u.s government my draft was in favor of assistant surgeon rank first lieutenant i read the i read the address several times and i liked it i confess it read strange to me though it read strange to me so reading that that he was paid a certain amount of money even though he didn't like the experience of of of the war but he was there to take care of of some of the wounded men and and and that experience of wearing his uniform another alexander augusta who also um wrote to president lincoln saying he's um he wanted to tender and tended to apply to apply for an appointment to become a surgeon for the freedman and he says i was compelled to leave he left his country to to live in canada to study medicine but come he was he returned to be a part of this experience of the war and here's his photograph and his letter um we see sojourner truth part of this and another group of photographs by white officers who photographed some of their the men in their camp and we see ranges of images of photographs that tell a different story a marriage certificate wb the boys organized an exhibition in 1900 of the medal of honor men who were part of the civil war and he put that in an exhibition in paris and this is a photograph that was on display there an important image that's it george easman house where lewis hind photographed a family family in their home and above the fireplace is the fort wagner a drawing of the fort wagner unfortunate death of of all of the men who died including shaw and we see this is a part of the artwork on the wall and we see the importance of the memory of that experience and contemporary artists such as window white looking at the history of these images of and the experience of the images that are in the archives and he's making contemporary images about um these experiences the notion of the grand army of the republic uh the veterans of the war this is a parade in may 30th uh 1912 in the blockson collection at temple university um young women and men walking with their grandfathers and fathers marching through the streets carry me weaves another artist who's also looking at that experience of the war and making art about it and she photographed the the monument the on in boston and here it's a title restless after the longest winter you marched and marched and from that experience carry is looking at the experience of an artist who used this story to create to recreate the monument and to dramatize the long marches the cold winters and photographing this at a time when the 54th left the city and it says that at the 54th regiment marching down beacon street on may 28 1863 they left boston to head south weaves focuses on one soldier in this big monument and she says that you know the because of the looking at these images in the tarnished winters and the experience of the artwork changing as a result of the elements it looks as they're sweat um rolling and falling down the soldier's face and the way that this brings life to the experiences of contemporary artists who looking at the war such as willie william earl williams's image of sergeant carney monument in north oak virginia that was built and by black people in that town and then linda ford roberts as she's photographing in north carolina and thinking about death as well as the experience of the burial grounds that the divided in death and you know and divided in life and here we see the the two sides of a cemetery and and then ending with images of women who were who worked for the union and the confederate hospitals there were nurses and cooks and laundry women um and here are some photographs that are in collections and one of my um i really love this image as an arlington house as a way of uh the responding to uh looking at this image and this is a salina nara's graze image um that she was um when she fled when the when robert lee left the house and here we see she is credited with saving um some union soldiers and say you know saving um some of the heirlooms from belonging to uh george washington that were stored in the house so she's has this complicated role in history where she's working uh with the both sides and at the same time understanding the role that she has in history by looking at this photograph we see her with these two young figures with dress again is a central story in this so i'm going to stop sharing the screen and open up for um questions so just checking the chat okay so there are no audience questions at this time and um this work for me in terms of the experience of of this wonderful um 10-year research follows um a long history of you know four years when we think about the war but i'm amazed at the research that we see that gives life to um these powerful images um just seeing the struggle that black people had in terms of fighting to be part of this phrase uh part of this equality wanting to be free and the importance that their words and their images are preserved they're preserved at the national archives and in terms of that experience but also their crucial stories as well as these images of these um fantastic works by the photographers as these artists um knew the importance of the worthiness of of these soldiers and and fighters and and cooks and nurses the sense of what it meant to be free and what it meant to personalize their experience through um the visual image and so um i guess now that um we have no questions and i'd like to end and just think about um for us to imagine what um you know photography meant um in this you know photography was basically 20 some-eyed years old when um the war started and to create this long visual history as visual evidence of of of the black presence was a an important role that photography played so in terms of the multiple lessons that we learned through history i see the visual visual experience as telling that story and thank you