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Military Lecture – Fighting for Citizenship: Black Union Soldiers on the Battlefield and in Politics
October 21, 2020
Image: 1864 Union recruitment broadside, P. S. Duval and Son, Philadelphia
Guelph Museums’ 2020-2021 military lecture series is going digital!
Dana Weiner presents, Fighting for Citizenship: Black Union Soldiers on the Battlefield and in Politics.
During the U.S. Civil War, African American men fought to join the Union ranks. Their struggle was just one operation in a much longer rights campaign that both free and enslaved people fought. Across the nation, thousands of Black men believed that they must join in the effort to defeat the Confederate States of America, but they confronted initial resistance to their offers of service. As soon as they could, they took advantage of the opportunities to participate in the Union war effort. This talk will explore Black men’s military service, their challenges and triumphs in wartime, and how they used their skills and experiences to gain political and civil rights in the post-war era.
Offered in partnership with the Laurier Centre for Military, Strategic and Disarmament Studies.
About Dana Weiner
Dr. Dana Elizabeth Weiner is associate professor of history at Wilfrid Laurier University. Her publications include “Legal Ambiguities on the Ground: Black Californians’ Land Claims, 1848-1870” in Beyond the Borders of the Law: Critical Legal Histories of the North American West(University Press of Kansas, 2018) and Race and Rights: Fighting Slavery and Prejudice in the Old Northwest, 1830-1870 (Northern Illinois University Press, 2013). Her current research concerns citizenship claims and rights activism among people of African descent in early California.
Did you miss the live event? Watch the recording Military Lecture: Fighting for Citizenship below:
