Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War's Most Persistent Myth

William G. McGowan Theater
Washington, DC

More than 150 years after the end of the Civil War, scores of websites, articles, and organizations repeat claims that anywhere between 500 and 100,000 free and enslaved African Americans fought willingly as soldiers in the Confederate army. But as Kevin M. Levin argues in Searching for Black Confederates, imprecise contemporary accounts, poorly understood primary source material, and other misrepresentations helped fuel the rise of the black Confederate myth.

A book signing follows the program.