The Rockbridge Historical Society is hosting a Zoom program on Monday, June 14, 7PM: as part of their Local Black Histories series.
The virtual Zoom presentation, welcome to all, will be kicking off the week of community-partnered Juneteenth events — with the NAACP, and many others — by focusing on the histories, wartime contributions, and post-war histories of 60+ Black men born in Rockbridge, who served in regiments of the U.S. Colored Troops, during the last two years of the Civil War.
The perspectives that this new, community-based research brings is timely, in celebrating the different routes to freedom, that Juneteenth celebrates. The program will detail the facts, broaden the narratives, and complicate standing assumptions about local Civil War histories, and the range of community responses and motivations of those who lived in this area.
Fighting for Freedom: Black Union Soldiers from Rockbridge will be presented by Larry Spurgeon and Cinder Stanton, moderated by Eric Wilson, with remarks by a descendant of one of those very Rockbridge USCT soldiers.
The Zoom Link for this presentation can be found at RockbridgeHistory.org