Civil War 150 Lecture Series: Dr. Sherita Johnson to Present, "Is This Freedom?: Harriet Jacobs and Black Contraband in Washington, D.C. During the Civil War"

News item published on: 2013-09-03 16:23:34

University Libraries at the University of Southern Mississippi will sponsor the second of five talks relating to the American Civil War on Monday, September 9, 2013, 6-7 p.m. in the Cook Library Art Gallery (LIB 105A).

'Is This Freedom?': Harriet Jacobs and Black Contraband in Washington, D.C. During the Civil War, by Dr. Sherita L. Johnson, traces Harriet Jacobs’ experiences as a fugitive slave and free woman by presenting a literary and historic tour of Alexandria.

Sherita L. Johnson is an associate professor of English at the University of Southern Mississippi, where she specializes in nineteenth-century African American literature, women writers, Jim Crow literature, and cultural studies. She is the author of Black Women in New South Literature and Culture, which examines the role of black women, historical and fictional, in the making of "New South" literature and culture of the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries. Since 2011, she has been the director of the Center for Black Studies at Southern Miss.

In September and October, University Libraries is sponsoring the Civil War 150 Lecture Series. This series focuses on different aspects of the Civil War including the life of the average soldier, African American writer and reformer Harriet Jacobs, food in the Civil War, singing and fiddling by soldiers, and slave insurrections in Mississippi. The talks are made possible by a grant from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, The Library of America, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The event is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

For more information about this talk or the lecture series, contact Jennifer Brannock at or 601.266.4347.