Free lecture will focus on black women in Civil War

STAFF REPORT

YOUNGSTOWN — A free lecture called “African-American Women in the Civil War” will be at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Youngstown Historical Center of Industry and Labor, better known as the Steel Museum, 151 W. Wood St.

The speaker will be Dr. Annette Jefferson of Columbus, who has a master’s degree in black studies and her doctorate in social work. She works in human services and is with the Ohio Humanities Council’s Speakers Bureau.

The presentation will explore the lives of the black women who all resolved to be a part of the Civil War.

Her talk focuses on women of African descent — Susie King Taylor, who served as a nurse with Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross; Elizabeth Keckley, dressmaker and confidant to Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of President Abraham Lincoln; Charlotte Forten, college graduate and first black American to teach freed slaves in the South; Harriet Tubman; Sojourner Truth; and others — and their unique contributions to the war effort.

Jefferson discusses how such women, without access to political power and often lacking material and/or financial resources, acted with strength of character and will to make meaningful contributions to the war that impacted the world and changed a nation.

The program is sponsored by Mahoning Valley Historical Society, Youngstown State University Center for Applied History and YSU Women’s Studies.

Funding was made possible by the Ohio Humanities Council, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.