Dr. Bobby Lovett will speak on contrabands in Nashville, their work on building Fort Negley, and the establishment of African-American communities in Davidson County. Dr. Lovett is senior professor of History, formerly Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Tennessee State University. He is the author of The African-American History of Nashville, 1780 – 1930: Elites and Dilemmas (1999), The Civil Rights Movement in Tennessee: A Narrative History (2005), and The Boyd Family’s Contribution to African-American Publishing from the 19th to the 21st Century.
Dr. Susan O’Donovan will talk about Emancipation, and its effects in Tennessee. She is an Associate Professor at University of Memphis, where she also serves as the Associate Chair of the Department of History. She states, “My work focuses on the history of enslaved women and men, the Civil War, emancipation, and that period we call Reconstruction as regional, national, and transnational phenomena.” She was awarded the Organization of American Historian’s James A. Rawley Prize in 2008 for the best book in the history of race, Becoming Free in the Cotton South. It explores the gendered dimensions of work in slavery and the ways in which those always contingent dynamics shaped black people’s expectations, aspirations, and experiences in freedom.
The 1861 Project will then give a performance from their new CD recording of original music inspired by the American Civil War. They were a big hit at last year’s meeting, and should be well received yet again.
The event will take place at Holy Trinity located at 6727 Charlotte Pike Nashville, TN 37209 on Saturday, April 13, from 8:30 am to noon.
The program will begin welcoming remarks and an introduction of the Mayor and the first speaker.