In honor of Black History Month, the Clark University History Department and Center for Gender, Race, and Area Studies will host “Embattled Freedom: Journeys Through the Civil War’s Slave Refugee Camps.” The event, which is free and open to the public, will take place at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, February 5, in the Fireside Lounge of Dana Commons (36 Maywood Street). Light refreshments will be served.

This Speakers Panel will feature special guest Amy Murrell Taylor of the University of Kentucky, in conversation with Clark history professors Janette Greenwood and Ousmane Power-Greene.

Taylor, associate professor of history, is author of “Embattled Freedom: Journeys Through the Civil War’s Slave Refugee Camps,” which examines the experiences of slaves who fled plantations to seek refuge inside the lines of the Union army as it moved into the Confederacy. The book draws on a survey of slave camps throughout the country to reveal what these refugees from slavery went through as they made their way through the vast landscape of army-supervised camps that emerged during the war.

Along with “Embattled Freedom,” Taylor’s recent publications include “The Divided Family in Civil War America.” Her research interests include the U.S. in the 19th century, the American South, the Civil War, and gender and family.

Professor Janette Greenwood teaches a variety of courses in U.S. History at Clark, including Race and Ethnicity in American History, History of the American South, Reconstruction, and The Gilded Age, and is affiliated with Clark’s program in Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies. She has published countless articles and books, including “First Fruits of Freedom: The Migration of Former Slaves and Their Search for Equality in Worcester, Massachusetts” in 2010. In 2018, she was awarded the 24th annual Historic New England Book Prize for “Rediscovering an American Community of Color: The Photographs of William Bullard, 1897-1917,” which she co-authored with Nancy Kathryn Burns, associate curator at the Worcester Art Museum.

Professor Ousmane Power-Greene teaches courses for undergraduates and graduate students on American history with a focus on African American internationalism and comparative social and political movements. His book, “Against Wind and Tide: The African American Struggle against the Colonization Movement,” examines black Americans’ efforts to agitate for equal rights in the North and Midwest in the face of the American Colonization Society’s colonization movement, which hoped to compel free blacks to leave the United States for Liberia. He has been at Clark since 2007.

For more information, contact Professor John Palella at jpalella@clarku.edu or Lori Buckley at lbuckley@clarku.edu.

Founded in 1887 in Worcester, Massachusetts, Clark University is a liberal arts-based research university addressing natural, social and human imperatives from local to global scales. Nationally renowned as a college that changes lives, Clark is a transformative force in higher education today. LEEP (Liberal Education and Effective Practice) is Clark’s pioneering model of education that combines a robust liberal arts curriculum with life-changing world and workplace experiences. Clark’s faculty and students work across boundaries to develop solutions to complex challenges in the natural sciences, psychology, geography, management, urban education, Holocaust and genocide studies, environmental studies, and international development and social change. The Clark educational experience embodies the University’s motto: Challenge Convention. Change Our World. www.clarku.edu