Gallery of Photos of United States Colored Troops & Civil War Era African Americans On Display in Manhattan

The Kimmel Windows Gallery at New York University is opening a new exhibit; The Black Civil War Soldier on Oct. 13 and on view until Feb. 28, 2023 along LaGuardia Place and West 3rd Street in Manhattan. The gallery exhibits works visible through its windows facing out onto the streets, so the exhibit can be seen 24 hours a day, seven days a week for free. The exhibit is curated by Deborah Willis, chair of NYU Tisch’s Department of Photography, the author of the popular new book of photographic history entitled The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship, published last year.

According to NYU:

Portraits of black soldiers, whether taken in a photographic studio, on a battleground, or on a campground, are connected to the concept of democracy and citizenship expressed by abolitionist and orator Frederick Douglass. 

In this exhibition, Willis seeks to engage that sense of activism and highlight the various acts of courage by black men and women, both bonded and free, during the Civil War, as well as the rewards they received. These are experiences shared by all the soldiers, no matter their backgrounds.

“Memory, personal and public, as viewed through the experience of photography, shaped the history of the black Civil War soldier. This exhibition synthesizes that history—both difficult and desired. We seek out memorials about slavery and the Civil War in the North and the South. We are engrossed in public debates about the relevance of monuments from Stone Mountain to Grant’s Tomb,” Willis said. “We visit historic sites such as Gettysburg, the African American Civil War Museum, and the Cyclorama in Atlanta, searching for new stories, and many people attend Civil War reenactments and Juneteenth celebrations.

“There is something about looking at images that forces me to question the narratives of the past. I have long been puzzled by the imagery of black peoples, and I have tried to make sense of the story that has been told. Images represent visual responses to what we may have been told about a period and prompt such questions as, ‘How was black male identity formed by images of soldiers in uniform?’” she continued.

The exhibition draws on Willis’ book in which she learned about the reality of the Civil War from the letters of black soldiers, and the photographs that frequently accompanied them. Black soldiers wrote to and received letters from black nurses and teachers, wives and mothers, girlfriends and daughters, and doctors (who supported and protested the war), as well as white officers and their wives. Some letters were written by the soldiers themselves; others were dictated to an unnamed scribe. They convey the importance of family and family ties, the urgent need to belong, losses caused by the war, and abuses inflicted on enslaved relatives left behind. 

By examining diary pages, letters, and news items, Willis builds on the stories that these portraits “tell”—to focus a lens on their hopefulness and the sense of what could be won from loss. These personal memories reach through the decades and centuries to tell us about individual feelings of love and longing, responsibility and fear, commitment, and patriotism.

Follow Reconstruction Blog on Social Media:

•