Author Ronald Coddington discusses his book “African American Faces of the Civil War: An Album,” with CivilWarMonitor.com.
In an earlier post, I talked about the book African American Faces of the Civil War: An Album by Ronald Coddington. The book features photographs of Civil War era African Americans – most of them members of the United States Colored Troops – along with a biographical sketch of the persons who are pictured. It’s the third book in Coddington’s “Faces of the Civil War” series. The first book features photos and stories of white Union soldiers, and the second features Confederate soldiers.
The video above is an interview with the Coddington, in which he discusses the process for creating the book, including the challenges he encountered and the insights he learned. The interview is conducted by Civilwarmonitor.com, the digital arm of The Civil War Monitor, a quarterly magazine about the history and memory of the Civil War.
Coddington mentions that his desire to do the book came from a very brief interaction with a black woman who attended a talk he gave about his first book, the one that featured white Union soldiers. The woman looked through the book, told Coddington that there were black people who fought in the Civil War, and then just walked away. Right then an there, Coddington says, he knew he had to do a follow-up book that explored the black experience during the war. I think that woman would be more than pleased with the result.
Jubilo! The Emancipation Century 