John Jay Homestead Virtual Lecture: The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship with Deborah Willis

Though both Union and Confederate armies excluded African American men from their initial calls to arms, many of the men who eventually served were black. With over seventy images, supplemented with handwritten captions, letters, and other personal materials, Willis depicts the lives of black Union soldiers and other African Americans involved with the struggle, and the importance of African American communities in the development and prosecution of the war.

Willis is University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. An art photographer as well, she is one of the nation’s leading historians of African American photography and curators of African diasporic cultures. She is a recipient of (among others) MacArthur, Cohen, Guggenheim and Alphonse Fletcher Fellowships; a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; and recipient of the Outstanding Service Award from the Royal Photographic Society in the UK.

Tickets to this virtual lecture are free but must be reserved in advance. Only registered guests will receive a link to the Zoom webinar the day before the lecture.