New Book Features Images Of Black Soldiers In The US Civil War

Did you ever wonder about the paucity of photographs of Black soldiers in the Civil War? As a child, author Deborah Willis did. When she later became a curator, she had the resources to look into the matter more deeply.

As reported in the Smithsonian Magazine of 2/1/2021, Ms. Willis eventually assembled her research into a new book published by NYU Press titled “The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship.” In addition to photographs, the book contains illustrations other artifacts such as posters, letters, journals, personal belongings, etc.

In an interview for Vogue, Willis said “Posing for portraits allowed black men who’d long been ‘told that they were second-class citizens, that they were subhuman,’ to assert their newfound identity and freedom as soldiers.”

Christian Fleetwood in uniform, from the Smithsonian Magazine story about the book, found in Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division