Professor Frank Deale (CUNY School of Law) gave opening keynote remarks at the CUNY and Race Forum sponsored by the Professional Staff Congress. Providing social, political, and legal historical context for affirmative action, he broached two themes. First, the difference between anti-discrimination and affirmative action policies and second, voluntary affirmative action versus change that occurs through legislative decisions. In this 17 minute talk, Frank Deale analyzes the periods of Reconstruction and the Civil War, including the effects of the Freedmen’s Bureau, to the Civil Rights movement, and CUNY’s policies of the 1970s and 80s up to  the present.

Click here to download the Powerpoint used in this talk.

In this seventeen minute talk, professor, curator, photographer Deborah Willis discusses the pictorial record and a “new memory of photography”—how these images have become standards for reimagining the lives of black soldiers and workers. As Civil War photographs were widely circulated, they became a story telling moment for those who posed. Looking at numerous images, she contemplates the “standard of pose” and what may have happened in front of the camera as well as the ways that these photos document the jobs, lives, aspirations, and beliefs of the soldiers. This talk was part of the public seminar: Is There Anything More to See?

In this seventeen minute talk, historian Mary Niall Mitchell uses less known and difficult to understand photographs to discuss the use of photography as propaganda during the Civil War. Abolitionists knew that they needed to “shrink the distance between the enslaved and the free” in order to reach their target audience, the white middle class. They harnessed an early form of documentary photography as the ideal medium with which to reach this broad public. Anti-slavery activists used staged studio portraits of white-looking children dressed not as ragged but rather Victorian. Before-and-after photos showed the move from rags to respectability. Mitchell says that these images represent “the Civil War we don’t remember”—a set of ideas about children, race, and photography that have not been part of the narrative. This talk was part of the public seminar: Is There Anything More to See?

In this 15 minute talk, art historian, curator, and photographer Anthony Lee provocatively examines Civil War era photography by way of one case study. The discovery, in June 2010, of a supposedly rare carte-de-visite depicting two African-American boys began a contentious ordeal over the monetary and historic value of the artifact. Lee examines the process involved in the creation of photographs during Civil War and their possible meanings and uses in the historical moment. In his unfolding of the recent events after the discovery of the image, which is in fact either a carte-de-visite or part of a stereograph, Lee shows how the meaning of the image went from “abuse + mistreatment” to “patronizing and possibly ironical” to “resiiance and defiance” depending on the interpretations of each of the image’s owners. He concludes that “Civil War photographers often anticipated that their work would become the key elements of historical recall and fashioned pictures to match those needs…it’s up to us to recognize their strategies.” This talk was part of the public seminar: Is There Anything More to See?

In this thirteen minute presentation, historian Martha Sandweiss challenges assumptions and some of the uses of Civil War photographs as historical documents. Although biased, unreliable, and unrepresentative, the images are mostly used as illustrations of events. While we remain fascinated with Civil War images, there is insufficient knowledge of how they were created and how they circulated in their own time. Research remains if we are to understand how these photographs shaped public opinion while simultaneously competing with other forms of imagery of the period. Today, we are left with the challenge of “how the limited and biased photographic record has shaped both public memory of a complex event and the writing of scholars, making us more likely to narrate some stories at the expense of others.” This talk was part of the public seminar: Is There Anything More to See?

Professor Hodges delivered this talk to a group of New York City public school teachers at the New York Public Library.

Gregory Downs, City College of New York, CUNY
“Ballots and Blood: The Grassroots Struggle for the Future of Reconstruction”
The Graduate Center, CUNY
July 19, 2010

The Reconstruction era was marked by both triumph and defeat as the newly emancipated slaves and their allies attempted to establish full political and economic freedoms in the face of violent opposition. While planters were initially successful in limiting the rights that accompanied emancipation, by the late 1860s freedpeople responded by asserting their claims to land, voting, and equal access. In the 1870s, former Confederates mobilized their own local political movements, using violent intimidation to quell gains in black voting and economic advancement.

In Part 1 of this podcast, Downs explores the main themes of Reconstruction through the story of Henry Adams, a remarkable former slave, Union army veteran, and successful businessman who organized freedpeople in the South to emigrate to Kansas. In Part 2, he describes the twists and turns in the Reconstruction struggle over what rights and protections would come with emancipation. He also discusses two primary documents (see below).

Wood engraving, Harper's Weekly, 26 September 1874

Southern Democrats Declare “a Dead Radical Is Very Harmless” document

Scott Reynolds Nelson, William and Mary College
Civil War @ 150: Civil War Myths and Misinformation
CUNY Graduate Center
April 5, 2011

In his 18 minute talk, Scott Reynolds Nelson contrasts three common images or notions from the Civil War with lesser known aspects that prevailed in the nineteenth century. While Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party are generally perceived as do-gooders, Nelson describes the paramilitary Wide Awake Clubs within the Party that Southerners feared as a potentially invading army. Battle scenes are common in popular culture representations of the war, but how the Civil War changed the food industry with the rise of modern canned, branded-name foods sold in the military camps is little explored.  Finally, Nelson discusses the importance of California and the transcontinental railroad to both sides of the war. This talk was part of the public seminar: Civil War Myths and Misinformation.

In this 16 minute talk, Gary W. Gallagher describes the ways that northerners viewed the war and their commitment to the nation as a union. While not downplaying the importance of emancipation, Gallagher argues that the concept of union was paramount for most northerners. They viewed southern slave owners as oligarchs who threatened the nation’s founding principles and the very notion of democracy. Both popular culture and recent scholarship have ignored the importance of union and most Americans today have a little understanding of its significance to Civil War era citizens. This talk was part of the public seminar: Civil War Myths and Misinformation.