Slate has an interesting interview with Kevin Levin, the author of the new book Searching for Black Confederates. From the interview:
Fast-forward to the civil rights era. The “black Confederates” myth blew up when the web got ahold of it. But the narrative the web amplified, you argue, was already percolating in the ’70s.
Yes, that’s right. Just to reiterate an important point, there was no reference during the war or even in the postwar period, through the 20th century, to the idea of “black Confederate soldiers.” In the seventies was when you see this shift from referring to these men as “body servants” to actual Confederate soldiers.
Coming out of the civil rights movement, new scholarship was beginning to filter down, historic sites were beginning to address the issues of slavery and emancipation, Roots was a hit, and we were starting to learn a bit about the United States Colored Troops in the Union Army. Neo-Confederates saw it as a threat, and they wanted to make sure they could balance the scales, if you will—and how do you do that? Go out and find your own brave black Confederates. The myth was percolating through the ’80s, responding to the success of the movie Glory, and also Ken Burns’ Civil War series—which, as Lost Cause–y as it is, they saw as a threat because it was dealing with slavery. And the public was eating it up. So the Neo-Confederates needed to come up with a response.
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So, ultimately there is finding no black confederates. I learned that was the truth from esteemed Professor James W. Loewen.