Biographical Profile of Sgt. Alfred Jackson

Sgt. Alfred Jackson, Company F, 108th U.S. Colored Infantry

Biographical Profile of Sgt. Alfred Jackson, 108th U.S. Colored Infantry

Sgt. Alfred Jackson
108th Regiment U.S. Colored Infantry
Born 1845, Fayette County, Kentucky
Died May 1, 1867

This chilling headline in the September 3, 1864, issue of the New York Times announced an attack by Confederate cavalry raiders on Union soldiers: “A Battalion of Negro Troops Slaughtered in Cold Blood; Murders and Outrages in Kentucky.” The victims, as many as five hundred men who belonged to the 108th U.S. Colored Infantry, included twenty-four-year-old Sgt. Alfred Jackson of Lexington, Kentucky.

Jackson had left his job as an army teamster two months earlier and enlisted in the regiment.⁴³⁰ Soon afterward, military authorities ordered the 108th to garrison two Union-occupied Kentucky towns. Half the regiment (one battalion) went to Munfordville. The other half, including Jackson and his company, traveled to Owensboro. It was here that the reported slaughter occurred.

If the headline had been strictly true, the killings would have been one of the largest such atrocities committed during the war. However, the Times headline was misleading. An attack did occur, but with far less loss than a battalion.

On August 27, 1864, about twenty cavalrymen from the Confederate Tenth Kentucky Partisan Rangers descended on Owensboro, along the Ohio River on the Indiana border. They were led by Capt. Jake Bennett, a notorious figure who had escaped from the Ohio State Penitentiary a year earlier with Gen. John Hunt Morgan, and who, it was rumored, had the scars of twenty-six bullets on his skin.⁴³¹ The partisan horsemen galloped into the town with guns blazing. Residents ran for cover. At least one man, a federal officer, suffered a wound.⁴³² The raiders rode to the town wharf and charged a boat laden with government supplies that was guarded by ten soldiers from the 108th. According to reports, the Confederate troopers shot seven of the guards and the other three hid on the vessel. The Confederates then set the boat on fire and fled. Citizens extinguished the flames and saved the remaining guards.⁴³³ The rest of the battalion, including Jackson, had departed Owensboro a day earlier.⁴³⁴

The raid on Owensboro turned out to be the only time any part of the 108th came under fire during its enlistment. The two battalions later reunited and served in a variety of garrison and guard duties in relative safety.

Jackson earned a reputation as one of the best sergeants in the regiment, according to one of his company officers.⁴³⁵ He mustered out with his comrades in March 1866 and returned to Lexington. He died the following year of an unknown cause. His widow Annie, whom he had married in 1861, attributed his death to disability contracted during his army service, but the nature of the disability is not specified in the official record.⁴³⁶

https://www.traditionrolex.com/16

Excerpted from African American Faces of the Civil War by Ronald S. Coddington.
Copyright 2012 by Johns Hopkins University Press. Reprinted by permission of the author and Johns Hopkins University Press. https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/10717/african-american-faces-civil-war

See Footnotes

⁴³⁰ Alfred Jackson military service record, NARA.
⁴³¹ Jacob Coffman “Jake” Bennett (1840–1904) started his Confederate army service with Company H of the Eighth Kentucky Infantry. He later joined the Tenth Kentucky Partisan Rangers. Watson, Confederate Guerrilla Sue Mundy, pp. 37–38, 119, 206.
⁴³² Period newspaper reports name the officer as Capt. Walters of the Third Kentucky Cavalry. No one by that name and rank is on the rolls of the regiment. However, two first lieutenants named Waters are on the rolls, John L. Waters of Company B and William Waters of Company K.
⁴³³ Louisville (Kentucky) Journal, August 30, 1864; Collins, History of Kentucky, vol. 1, p. 139.
⁴³⁴ Louisville (Kentucky) Journal, August 30, 1864.
⁴³⁵ The reference can be found on the back of the carte de visite of Jackson owned by Theodore Francis Wright, who served as first lieutenant of Company F. A brief note penned by Wright states, “Freeman in the army as teamster, is considered one of the best Sergeants in the regiment.”
⁴³⁶ Annie (Jackson) Thompson pension record, NARA.

⁵⁶⁶ Fanny Garvin pension record, NARA. ⁵⁶⁷ Sinclair Garvin (1791–1866) of Rockingham County, Virginia, owned nineteen slaves, according to the 1860 Slave Schedules. He married Harriet Woodson (1803–1863) in 1821. Woodsonville is named for her father, Thomas Woodson (1772–1857). ⁵⁶⁸ Abram Garvin military service record, NARA. ⁵⁶⁹ The soldier was Lafayette Rogan (1830–1906), who served as a second lieutenant in Company B of the Thirty-fourth Mississippi Infantry. Hauberg, “A Confederate Prisoner at Rock Island: The Diary of Lafayette Rogan,” p. 46. ⁵⁷⁰ Capt. Leroy D. House to “Friend B,” September 26, 1864. Leroy D. House Letters, Connecticut Historical Society. ⁵⁷¹ Fanny Garvin pension record, NARA. ⁵⁷² Ibid.

Featured Images of Military Records

Alfred Jackson, Company Descriptive Book

*Photo courtesy of the Randolph Linsly Simpson African-American Collection, James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection in the Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

March 21, 2022February 22, 2025

Biographical Profile of Corp. Henry Lively

Corp. Henry Lively, Company F, 108th U.S. Colored Infantry*

Biographical Profile of Corp. Henry Lively, 108th U.S. Colored Infantry

Corp. Henry Lively
108th Regiment U.S. Colored Infantry
Born 1838, Hart County, Kentucky
Died October 12, 1872

On May 30, 1865, as large numbers of Union volunteers prepared to muster out of the army in the dawn of the postwar period, Corp. Henry Lively and his comrades in the 108th U.S. Colored Infantry geared up for a new assignment. They marched out of the barracks at Rock Island, Illinois, where they had spent the previous nine months guarding Confederate prisoners, for duty in Mississippi as part of the garrison at Vicksburg.

The regiment arrived in the once-formidable Confederate stronghold ten days later. The conditions were awful. “The weather was very hot and the water was very bad,” recalled one soldier. Many became sick, including Lively, who fell ill with malaria.⁷¹² The chronic fever and chills symptomatic of the disease took many men out of action, but not Henry. He remained in the ranks despite his infirmity, although he reported for duty only half the time.⁷¹³

Born enslaved about seventy-five miles south of Louisville, Kentucky, in Hart County, Henry lived on the farm of his enslaver, Billy Mansfield, who also owned at least two of Henry’s brothers.⁷¹⁴ At some point, Mansfield sold young Henry to Ben Lively. Henry took his new enslaver’s last name as his own.

During the late 1850s, then teen-aged Henry united in an unofficial slave marriage with a woman named Mandy. After her sudden and unexpected death a short time later, he began a relationship with a Martha Smith. She was about four years his senior and had two children fathered by a white man named Harvey Adams.⁷¹⁵

Martha noted of her marriage, “We didn’t have any kind of ceremony performed but we just took up with each other like the slaves did. We did so with the permission of our masters and mistresses.” They had their first child, a son, about 1860. He grew up in the same household with his two half-white siblings.⁷¹⁶

In the summer of 1864, having been freed by his enslaver, Henry bid farewell to his family and joined the army. He was assigned to Company F of the 108th. He earned his corporal’s stripes and assisted company sergeants and officers in maintaining order and discipline at various posts in Kentucky, at Rock Island, and in Mississippi, where the regiment remained until it disbanded in March 1866.⁷¹⁷ Lively’s lieutenant described him as the “best man in the company.”⁷¹⁸

Lively mustered out with his comrades and returned to Martha and the children in Kentucky. He died six years later of the malaria contracted at Vicksburg. He was about thirty-eight. Martha, pregnant with another son, survived him. She collected a government pension for Henry’s war service until her death in 1908.⁷¹⁹

See Footnotes

⁷¹² Martha A. Lively pension record, NARA.
⁷¹³ Ibid.
⁷¹⁴ Several men named William Mansfield lived in Hart and the surrounding counties. Henry’s two brothers, Richard and Thomas, kept the Mansfield name. This suggests that Henry was sold away from them.
⁷¹⁵ A search of federal census records to determine the identity and background of Harvey Adams had been inconclusive. Martha A. Lively pension record, NARA.
⁷¹⁶ Ibid.
⁷¹⁷ Henry Lively military service record, NARA.
⁷¹⁸ Theodore Francis Wright, who served as first lieutenant of Company F, wrote these words on the back of the carte de visite of Lively.
⁷¹⁹ Martha A. Lively pension record, NARA.

Featured Images of Military Records

March 21, 2022February 22, 2025

Biographical Profile of Pvt. George Davis Long

Pvt. George Davis Long, Company F, 108th U.S. Colored Infantry

Biographical Profile of Pvt. George Davis Long, 108th U.S. Colored Infantry

Sgt. George Davis Long
108th Regiment U.S. Colored Infantry
Born 1838,
Shelby County, Kentucky
Died September 24, 1915,
Shelby County, Kentucky

The beginning of the end of the military service of Dave Long can be traced to a single march in eastern Mississippi. “We went double quick,” he remembered of the journey one day in late August 1865. He fell ill with fever and diarrhea after his return and was admitted to the post hospital at Meridian.⁷³³

Long had arrived in the state two months earlier with his regiment, the 108th U.S. Colored Infantry, for duty in Vicksburg. His stay there was unpleasant. Night after night of sleeping on cold ground as spring turned to summer left him with chronic joint pain. He also dislocated his left ankle while carrying water.⁷³⁴

The thirty-year-old formerly enslaved soldier had no history of health problems before he entered Mississippi. He was born George Davis Long in Shelby County, Kentucky, but most folks called him “Dave” or “David.” He and his mother and father were part of a group of about thirteen individuals enslaved by Robert Long, a farmer who hailed from Pennsylvania. After Robert’s death in 1847, ownership of twelve-year-old Dave and the other enslaved people passed to Long’s son William, who sided with the Union during the war.⁷³⁵

In 1864, with his enslaver’s consent, Dave traveled to nearby Louisville and joined the army. He summarized his service, which included a stint at the Rock Island, Illinois, prisoner of war camp, in one sentence: “I enlisted as a private and excepting a short time at Rock Island when I cooked I carried a gun, but was never in battles.”⁷³⁶ Shortly before the regiment left Rock Island for Mississippi, one of his company officers described Dave as a “good and faithful soldier.”⁷³⁷

Within months, he landed in the hospital at Meridian. The fever and diarrhea persisted. In November 1865 he was transferred to a general hospital at Columbus, Mississippi. His condition remained unchanged. The doctor assigned to his case declared Dave unfit for further service and ordered him discharged a week before Christmas 1865.⁷³⁸

He returned to Shelby County and there regained his health and lived a long life. He outlived his wife Emily, whom he married in 1872. She died in 1913. He succumbed to kidney disease two years later at age eighty. Four children, two sons and two daughters, survived him.⁷³⁹

See Footnotes

⁷³³ David (George D.) Long pension record, NARA.
⁷³⁴ Ibid.
⁷³⁵ According to the 1840 U.S. Census, the household of Robert Long (1773–1847) included eighteen persons, five of whom were free white people. Twenty years later, his son William (1813–1894) owned fifteen slaves, according to the 1860 Slave Schedules. In 1866, William Long filed an application for compensation for Dave from the federal government. He received a $300 payment in 1867. David (George D.) Long military service record, NARA.
⁷³⁶ David (George D.) Long pension record, NARA.
⁷³⁷ Theodore Francis Wright, who served as first lieutenant of Company F, wrote these words on the back of the carte de visite of Long.
⁷³⁸ David (George D.) Long pension record, NARA.
⁷³⁹ Ibid.

Featured Images of Military Records

Compensation Claim from George Davis Long's Enslaver

March 21, 2022February 22, 2025

Biographical Profile of Pvt. Charles Mudd

Pvt. Charles Mudd-Company C 108th U.S. Colored Infantry

Biographical Profile of Pvt. Charles Mudd, 108th U.S. Colored Infantry

Pvt. Charles Mudd
108th Regiment U.S. Colored Infantry
Born 1838-1839,
Washington County, Kentucky
Died May 4, 1915
Washington County, Kentucky

Charlie Mudd sipped milk and nibbled chicken as he recovered from measles at a military hospital in Louisville, Kentucky, during the fourth summer of the war. He periodically received medicine ordered by the doctor assigned to his case. The twenty-five-year-old formerly enslaved private, who had labored in his enslaver’s fields about sixty-five miles away in Washington County, joined the newly formed 108th U.S. Colored Infantry without his enslaver’s consent in June 1864.⁴¹⁵

Charles Mudd was one of three brothers who served in black regiments.⁴¹⁶ Less than a month after Mudd enlisted, he fell ill while on duty in Louisville, as measles swept through the regiment. Mudd’s illness might have been avoided. About a year earlier, Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman proposed one way to reduce disease in rookie regiments. He suggested that inexperienced recruits be distributed among veteran regiments instead of being lumped together in new organizations. By doing so, Sherman explained, they “would learn from the sergeants and corporals and privates the art of taking care of themselves, which would actually save their lives and preserve their health against the host of diseases that invariably attack the regiments.”⁴¹⁷

Authorities did not act on Sherman’s suggestion. The army’s medical corps did make substantial improvements that contributed to the health and welfare of the troops. None of these changes prevented Mudd from getting sick. He recovered after two weeks in the hospital and rejoined his company. He spent the next twenty months at locations in Kentucky and Mississippi and guarding Confederate prisoners of war at Rock Island, Illinois. He served as a corporal for most of his enlistment but was reduced to the ranks for an undisclosed reason before he mustered out of the army in March 1866.

He returned to Washington County and became a farmer in Springfield. He married Harriet McIntire in 1867. She died in 1872, possibly from complications of childbirth. She left Mudd widowed with a three-year-old son. Mudd married Rose Howard later that year, and they lived together until his death from influenza in 1915 at about age seventy-four.⁴¹⁸

See Footnotes

⁴¹⁵ Mudd’s military service record lists his owner as A. Mudd. This may be Austin Mudd (1801–1874) of Springfield, Kentucky; according to federal slave schedules, he owned eight slaves in 1850 and two in 1860.
According to great-great-grandnephew Adrian Wells, John Donatus Mudd (1805–after 1884) of Springfield owned Charles Mudd. This may be Donattus Mudd, who owned thirteen slaves according to the 1850 Slave Schedules but is not mentioned in the 1860 Slave Schedules. Adrian Wells (great-great-grandson of George Henry Mudd, brother of Charles) to the author, July 6, 2009.
⁴¹⁶ Jack Mudd served in the 107th U.S. Colored Infantry. George Henry Mudd served in the 109th U.S. Colored Infantry.
⁴¹⁷ Jack Mudd served in the 107th U.S. Colored Infantry. George Henry Mudd served in the 109th U.S. Colored Infantry.
⁴¹⁸ Rose Mudd pension record, NARS.

Featured Images of Military Records

*Photo courtesy of the Gettysburg National Military Park Museum

March 3, 2022March 5, 2025

Biographical Profile of Corp. Wilson Weir

Biographical Profile of Corp. Wilson Weir, 108th U.S. Colored Infantry

Corp. Wilson Weir
108th Regiment U.S. Colored Infantry
Born 1843,
Muhlenburg County, Kentucky
Died January 1, 1877

Wilson Weir left his home in Greenville, Kentucky, with a friend, and joined the Union army in the summer of 1864.³⁶³ The twenty-one-year-old did so with the knowledge and consent of his enslaver, Edward Weir, who, despite owning human beings, supported emancipation.

An historian described Edward Weir, who kept Wilson and about forty other enslaved people before the war, as “an influential merchant, lawyer, and politician, a slave-holder, an abolitionist, and a strong Union man” who owned a fine home and built brick cabins to house the people he enslaved.³⁶⁴

Wilson lived in one of the cabins with his mother, Lucinda, and father, Jube. Young Wilson had a reputation as one of the best enslaved ministers in the area. He preached at worship meetings in schoolhouses and churches across his home county. Military service temporarily suspended his local ministry and forever ended his enslaved status.³⁶⁵

Wilson was assigned to a new regiment, the 108th U.S. Colored Infantry. After less than two weeks in uniform he received a promotion to corporal of the color guard.³⁶⁶ He earned the respect of one company officer as “a thorough soldier.”³⁶⁷

Wilson served in this capacity at various posts in Kentucky and Mississippi and in Rock Island, Illinois, where the regiment guarded Confederate prisoners.

In March 1866, he mustered out of the army with his comrades at Vicksburg, Mississippi, and returned via steamboat to Greenville. He resumed life as a preacher and married a local girl, Francis Martin.³⁶⁸

Chronic diarrhea, which he had developed during the war, continued to plague him intermittently. In early 1877, while on a trip to get medicine in Louisville, he suffered another bout of the disease and fell ill with smallpox. Too sick to make the return trip home, he remained in Louisville and there succumbed to his afflictions at about age thirty-four. His wife survived him.³⁶⁹

See Footnotes

³⁶³ The friend, Hudson Sturt, became a private in Company B of the 108th U.S. Colored Infantry. He survived the war. Hudson Sturt military service record, NARA.
³⁶⁴ Edward Rumsey Weir Sr. (1816–1891) lived in Greenville his entire life. In 1861, he raised and partially equipped a company of soldiers for the Eleventh Kentucky Infantry. The volunteers he recruited elected his son, Edward Rumsey Weir Jr. (1839–1906), as captain and company commander. The younger Weir resigned in January 1863. He rejoined the army later that year as lieutenant colonel of the Thirty-fifth Kentucky Infantry. 1860 Slave Schedules; Rothert, A History of Muhlenberg County, pp. 60, 252; Edward R. Weir military service record, NARA.
³⁶⁵ Rothert, A History of Muhlenberg County, p. 340.
³⁶⁶ Wilson Weir military service record, NARA.
³⁶⁷ Theodore Francis Wright, who served as first lieutenant of Company F, wrote these words on the back of his carte de visite of Weir. The complete note reads: “Is Color Corp: marches between the color bearers—is a thorough soldier—does not go on guard.”
³⁶⁸ Lucinda Weir pension file, NARA.
³⁶⁹ Ibid.

Featured Images of Military Records

*Photo courtesy of the Randolph Linsly Simpson African-American Collection, James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection
in the Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

April 27, 2021February 3, 2023

Episode 10: My Old Kentucky Home

Season One | Episode 10

Episode Ten: My Old Kentucky Home

Hosted by Dan Gediman. With Emily Bingham.

If you live in Kentucky, it is hard to avoid hearing the state song, My Old Kentucky Home. But it is a song with a lot of historical baggage relating to the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow in Kentucky. Our guest, historian Emily Bingham, will help us unpack that baggage. She is the author of an upcoming book about the song, Singing About Slavery: “My Old Kentucky Home.” Episode Transcript

Emily Bingham

Emily Bingham is Visiting Honors Faculty Fellow at Bellarmine University. Her forthcoming work, Singing About Slavery: “My Old Kentucky Home” (Knopf) details the long history of Pittsburgh composer Stephen Foster’s 1853 blackface minstrel song.

Emily is Visiting Honors Faculty Fellow at Bellarmine University. Her forthcoming work, Singing About Slavery: “My Old Kentucky Home” (Knopf) details the long history of Pittsburgh composer Stephen Foster’s 1853 blackface minstrel song. The sentimental favorite has played annually since 1930 as the horses parade to the starting gate for the Kentucky Derby, “the fastest two minutes in sports.” Known across the globe, this sonic monument has been Kentucky’s official anthem for nearly a century. Bingham grew up with no idea that the song was about a slave sold down river from Kentucky to die in the Deep South. How and why she and almost everyone else “forgot” this basic truth, and how a song about slavery offered occasions for honor and celebration, trigger larger questions about Black pain white Americans have not heard. Singing About Slavery takes readers on a journey critical to understanding the nation’s past and its legacy for the present.

Bingham’s essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in Vogue, The Journal of Southern History, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, and New England Review. Her books are Irrepressible: The Jazz Age Life of Henrietta Bingham (2015), Mordecai: An Early American Family (2003), and, as editor with Thomas A. Underwood, The Southern Agrarians and the New Deal: Essays After I’ll Take My Stand (2001).

Episode Bibliography

Learn more about slavery and its lasting effects in America by exploring the source materials referenced in The Reckoning. Our bibliography contains many items that are available to read or download for free. If you choose to purchase any of the books through the links provided, as an Amazon Associate, our non-profit organization Reckoning, Inc., earns commissions from qualifying purchases.

Emily Bingham’s book, Singing About Slavery: “My Old Kentucky Home” will be published in early 2022.

How to Subscribe to The Reckoning Podcast

You can subscribe to our podcast by following these links to Apple Podcasts (for iPhones or iPads), Google Podcasts (for Android phones and tablets), and Spotify. For any other podcasting services (Stitcher, Amazon Music, etc.), search for The Reckoning: Facing the Legacy of Slavery in America or paste this RSS feed in the app: https://feed.podbean.com/reckoningradio/feed.xml. You can also listen to all episodes of the series on the Podcast page of our website, as well as on our YouTube channel.

February 3, 2021February 3, 2023

Episode 9: Facing the Past

Season One | Episode 9

Episode Nine: Facing the Past
Hosted by Dan Gediman and Loretta Williams. Featuring interviews with Sadiqa Reynolds, Dr. Ricky Jones, Dr. Kidada Williams, Dr. Anita Fernander, and Dr. William Darity.

There are clear lines that connect the legacy of slavery to many of our present day issues, including the racial inequities of COVID-19 infection and deaths, wealth inequality, and ongoing police brutality. A true and deep understanding of our history allows us to navigate the present moment and stop running away from the past. Episode Transcript

Sadiqa N. Reynolds, esq.

Sadiqa Reynolds is the President and CEO of Louisville Urban League, the first woman to hold this title in the affiliate’s 95-year history.

Sadiqa Reynolds is the President and CEO of Louisville Urban League. Her appointment made her the first woman to hold this title in the affiliate’s 95-year history. She has previously served as Chief for Community Building in the Office of the Mayor where she oversaw approximately 1500 employees. Sadiqa serves on several boards including Fund for the Arts, the Louisville Chamber, WAVE3 Editorial Board, WDRD Advisory Board and is a Director for the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

She has served as District Judge for the 30th Judicial Court. She was also the first African American woman to clerk for the Kentucky Supreme Court when she served as Chief Law Clerk for the late Chief Justice Robert F. Stephens. Her life as a public servant also includes being the first African American to serve as Inspector General for the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Services.

Prior to entering the public sector, Sadiqa owned and managed her private legal practice. Her practice included criminal litigation, employment law, death penalty litigation and serving as Guardian Ad Litem representing abused, neglected and dependent children as well as arguing successfully before the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. She has also been recognized by the Louisville Bar Association for providing pro bono hours in which she represented domestic violence victims and other disadvantaged citizens.

Sadiqa earned her BA in Psychology from the University of Louisville and her law degree from the University of Kentucky. She is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. and Bates Memorial Baptist Church.

She is an advocate for mental health awareness and received the 2017 Community Leader of the Year Award from the National Alliance on Mental Illness because of her work to reduce the stigma around mental health. She is also a proponent for Restorative Justice and participated in the face it campaign to end child abuse.

Under her leadership, the Louisville Urban League is committed to jobs, justice, education, health and housing. She has been featured on CNN’s Headline News for the Louisville Urban League’s work on the State of Black Louisville and been a guest on FOX News as well as the national Funky Politics podcast.

Sadiqa is a much sought-after speaker who has been recognized as a Business First Enterprising Woman to Watch and a Woman of Influence. She has been honored with a Tower Award, a Torch of Wisdom and named a Daughter of Greatness by the Muhammad Ali Center. She’s received the Fannie Lou Hamer award, for her commitment to justice and in 2016 was recognized as BizWomen’s Business Journal top 100 women to watch nationally. She was also recognized for her housing advocacy work by the Mortgage Banker’s Association and in 2017 was recognized as Louisville’s Communicator of the Year. Just this year she was honored to be named a recipient of the Gertrude E. Rush Award by the National Bar Association.

She has been featured on public radio, television and numerous print media outlets including the NY Times. She has two beautiful daughters Sydney, 8th grade and Wynter, 6th grade, both being educated in public schools. Sadiqa has received two honorary Doctorates, one from Spalding University and the other from Simmons College of Kentucky. Sadiqa Reynolds was the 2017 Louisville Magazine Person of Year and a 2018 National Urban League Woman of Power.

Dr. Ricky L. Jones

Dr. Ricky L. Jones is Professor and Chair of the University of Louisville’s Department of Pan-African Studies.

Dr. Ricky L. Jones is Professor and Chair of the University of Louisville’s Department of Pan-African Studies. A native of Atlanta, Georgia, Jones was educated as an undergraduate at the U.S. Naval Academy, Morehouse College (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s alma mater). He was only the second African-American to receive a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Kentucky where he specialized in Political Philosophy and Comparative Politics. His books include: two editions of “Black Haze: Violence, Sacrifice, and Manhood in Black Greek-Letter Fraternities” and “What’s Wrong with Obamamania?: Black America, Black Leadership, and the Death of Political Imagination.”

He is currently co-authoring a new book with attorney and award-winning cartoonist Marc Murphy titled, “Kaepernick, Confederates, and Con-Artists.” He has written hundreds of scholarly and magazine articles, book chapters and opinion columns.

Dr. Jones has served as a local, national, and international social and political analyst across various media including appearances on HBO, CNN, Fox News, ESPN, the Travel Channel, a variety of NPR and PBS programs, the BBC, E! Entertainment, the Katie (Couric) Show, the Canadian Broadcast Corporation, and many others. He is the host of the “Erasing History’ Podcast and the “Ricky Jones Show” from iHeart Media. The “Ricky Jones Show” was named Best of Louisville’s 2017 “Best Radio Show.”

He is a contributing opinion columnist for the Courier-Journal and USA Today Network for which he was named 2018 “best editorial/opinion columnist” by the Society of Professional Journalists.

Among many other honors, Jones has been named one of Louisville’s 25 Future Leaders by Louisville Magazine and was also recognized as one of DIVERSE Issues in Higher Education’s “25 to Watch in Academia.” He is a life-member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc.

Visit him at: www.rickyljones.com

Follow on Twitter: @DrRickyLJones

Dr. Anita Fernander

Anita Fernander is an Associate Professor of Behavioral Science in the College of Medicine at the University of Kentucky, as well as Founder & Chair of the Lexington-Fayette County Health Disparities Coalition.

Anita Fernander is an Associate Professor of Behavioral Science in the College of Medicine at the University of Kentucky. She received her Ph.D. in Clinical Health Psychology from the University of Miami, has a Master’s Degree in the same and holds two Bachelor’s degrees (one in Physical Education and the other in Psychology) from Oakwood College (now Oakwood University) an HBCU in Huntsville, Alabama. Prior to arriving at the University of Kentucky she completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Medical Psychology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN.

Her primary area of research and teaching has focused on examining the impact of race-related stress on health disparities among African Americans. She teaches the following courses: “Race, Racism and Health Disparities among Blacks in the U.S.”, “The History of Medicine among Blacks in the U.S.: Implications for Health Disparities” and “Introduction to Clinical Medicine”.

Her current scholarly passion is focused on increasing the number of under-represented minorities in medicine, training and mentoring students and faculty regarding cultural humility, and promoting diversity, inclusivity, and equity in academic medicine. She is also Founder & Chair of the Lexington-Fayette County Health Disparities Coalition.

Kidada Williams

Kidada E. Williams is an author and associate professor of History at Wayne State University.

Kidada E. Williams is a historian and author who researches the history of African American survivors of racist violence. She is the author of They Left Great Marks on Me and co-editor of Charleston Syllabus. She is finishing I Saw Death Coming, a book about African American families held captive by the Klan during Reconstruction. She lives, works, and plays in Detroit.

William A. Darity, Jr.

William A. Darity, Jr. is the Samuel DuBois Cook Professor of Public Policy, African and African American Studies, and Economics and the director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University.

William A. (“Sandy”) Darity Jr. is the Samuel DuBois Cook Professor of Public Policy, African and African American Studies, and Economics and the director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University. He has served as chair of the Department of African and African American Studies and was the founding director of the Research Network on Racial and Ethnic Inequality at Duke. Previously he served as director of the Institute of African American Research, director of the Moore Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program, director of the Undergraduate Honors Program in economics, and director of Graduate Studies at the University of North Carolina. at Chapel Hill.

Darity’s research focuses on inequality by race, class and ethnicity, stratification economics, schooling and the racial achievement gap, North-South theories of trade and development, skin shade and labor market outcomes, the economics of reparations, the Atlantic slave trade and the Industrial Revolution, the history of economics, and the social psychological effects of exposure to unemployment.

He was a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation (2015-2016), a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (2011-2012) at Stanford, a fellow at the National Humanities Center (1989-90) and a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors (1984). He received the Samuel Z. Westerfield Award in 2012 from the National Economic Association, the organization’s highest honor, Politico 50 recognition in 2017, and an award from Global Policy Solutions in 2017. He is a past president of the National Economic Association and the Southern Economic Association. He also has taught at Grinnell College, the University of Maryland at College Park, the University of Texas at Austin, Simmons College and Claremont-McKenna College.

He has served as Editor in Chief of the latest edition of the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, (Macmillan Reference, 2008) and as an Associate Editor of the 2006 edition of the Encyclopedia of Race and Racism (2013).

His most recent book, coauthored with A. Kirsten Mullen, is From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the 21st Century (2020). Previous books include For-Profit Universities: The Shifting Landscape of Marketized Education (2010) (co-edited Tressie McMillan Cottom), Economics, Economists, and Expectations: Microfoundations to Macroapplications (2004) (co-authored with Warren Young and Robert Leeson), and Boundaries of Clan and Color: Transnational Comparisons of Inter-Group Disparity (2003) (co-edited with Ashwini Deshpande).He has published or edited 13 books and published more than300 articles in professional outlets.

Episode Bibliography

Darity, William, and Mullen, Kirsten. (paid link) “From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century”. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2020.

Fernander, A., Duran, R., Saab, P. and Schneiderman, N. (2004). “John Henry Active Coping, education, and blood pressure among urban blacks”. Journal of the National Medical Association, 96(2), 246-255.

Fernander, A., Durán, R., Saab, P., Llabre, M. and Schneiderman, N. (2003) “Assessing the reliability and validity of the John Henry Scale for Active Coping among an urban sample of African-Americans and white-Americans”. Ethnicity and Health, 8(2), 147-161.

Williams, Kidada E. (paid link) They Left Great Marks on Me: African American Testimonies of Racial Violence from Emancipation to World War I. New York: NYU Press, 2012.

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December 22, 2020February 3, 2023

Episode 8: Zebulon Ward

Season One | Episode 8

Episode Eight: Zebulon Ward
Hosted by Dan Gediman. With Caleb McDaniel, featuring Alec Volz.

In addition to being a slave trader and the kidnapper of Henrietta Wood (which we heard about in our last episode), Kentuckian Zebulon Ward made a fortune as a pioneer of the convict leasing system, which, through a loophole in the 13th Amendment, continued slavery by another name for decades after the Civil War. Episode Transcript

Caleb McDaniel

Dr. W. Caleb McDaniel is Associate Professor of History at Rice University, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author.

Dr. W. Caleb McDaniel is Associate Professor of History at Rice University. He is the author of Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America (2019), which received the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in History and the Avery O. Craven Award from the Organization of American Historians. His first book, The Problem of Democracy in the Age of Slavery (2013), won the Merle Curti Award from the Organization of American Historians and the James Broussard Prize from the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic. His essays have also appeared in The New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, The Atlantic, Time, and numerous scholarly journals. He lives in Houston.

Episode Bibliography

Fairbank, Calvin. “Exploits of Calvin Fairbank”. Manuscript, 1893. Wilbur H. Siebert Collection.

McDaniel, W. Caleb. (paid link) Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.

Scott, A.H. “Penitentiary Investigation,” The Arkansas Democrat, March 21, 1879. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/34873777/penitentiary-investigation-arkansas/

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December 9, 2020February 3, 2023

Episode 7: Henrietta Wood

Season One | Episode 7

Episode Seven: Henrietta Wood
Hosted by Dan Gediman. With Caleb McDaniel, featuring Jacqui Blue.

In 1848, Henrietta Wood was delighted to be granted her freedom when her enslaver moved to Ohio, a free state. But five years later, she was kidnapped, taken across the river to Kentucky, and sold back into slavery for another 13 years. In 1878, she successfully sued her kidnapper and received the largest known sum ever granted by a U.S. court in restitution for slavery. Episode Transcript

Caleb McDaniel

Dr. W. Caleb McDaniel is Associate Professor of History at Rice University, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author.

Dr. W. Caleb McDaniel is Associate Professor of History at Rice University. He is the author of Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America (2019), which received the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in History and the Avery O. Craven Award from the Organization of American Historians. His first book, The Problem of Democracy in the Age of Slavery (2013), won the Merle Curti Award from the Organization of American Historians and the James Broussard Prize from the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic. His essays have also appeared in The New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, The Atlantic, Time, and numerous scholarly journals. He lives in Houston. the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic. His essays have also appeared in The New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, The Atlantic, Time, and numerous scholarly journals. He lives in Houston.

Episode Bibliography

“Story of a Slave.” Cincinnati Commercial, April 2, 1876, p. 2.

McDaniel, W. Caleb. (paid link) Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.

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November 11, 2020February 3, 2023

Episode 6: Lost Cause

Season One | Episode 6

Episode Six: Lost Cause
Hosted by Dan Gediman. With George Wright, Anne Marshall, Kidada Williams, Patrick Lewis, Ricky Jones, Michael Morrow, and Russ Bowlds, and featuring Louis Robert Thompson, Keith McGill, Mark Forman, Susan Linville, and Erin Jones.

In the years that followed the Civil War, many Kentuckians embraced the Lost Cause ideology, even if they had fought for the Union. And some joined armed vigilante groups that used violence and terror to keep Black Kentuckians away from power and prosperity. Episode Transcript

George C. Wright

George C. Wright is an historian, noted author, and distinguished university scholar and senior faculty fellow for Institutional Diversity at the University of Kentucky.

George C. Wright is an historian, noted author, and distinguished university scholar and senior faculty fellow for Institutional Diversity at the University of Kentucky. Wright is involved in special assignments at both the administrative level and in the university’s College of Arts and Sciences.

Wright received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in art in 1972 and 1974, respectively, from UK, both in history, and a doctoral degree in history from Duke University. He became the seventh president of Prairie View A&M University in 2003 and served in the role until 2017, when he was named Prairie View A&M University President Emeritus.

A native Kentuckian, Dr. George Wright is the author of “A History of Blacks in Kentucky: In Pursuit of Equality, 1890-1980, Volume II; Racial Violence in Kentucky, 1865-1940: Lynchings, Mob Rule and “Legal Lynchings,” and Life Behind a Veil: Blacks in Louisville, Kentucky, 1865-1930.

Anne Marshall

Anne Marshall is an associate professor of history at Mississippi State University.

Anne E. Marshall is an associate professor of history at Mississippi State University. She is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Centre College of Kentucky and earned a Ph.D. from the University of Georgia in 2004. She has worked at Mississippi State University since 2006, and teaches numerous graduate level courses, as well as undergraduate courses including Jacksonian American (1825-1850); History of the Old South; and the History of Southern Women.

She is the author of Creating a Confederate Kentucky: The Lost Cause and Civil War Memory in a Border State (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2010). She has also published numerous journal articles and essays, two of which have won prizes for best article for the year of publication (Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, 2000 and Journal of the Civil War Era, 2011). Marshall has presented numerous papers and commented on panels at conferences including the American Historical Association, Organization of American Historians, the Southern Historical Association, and the Society of Civil War Historians. Her current book project looks nineteenth century anti-slavery politics through the life of the colorful Kentucky emancipationist Cassius M. Clay.

Kidada Williams

Kidada E. Williams is an author and associate professor of History at Wayne State University.

Dr. Patrick Lewis

Patrick Lewis is Scholar in Residence at the Filson Historical Society and is co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal, Ohio Valley History.

Patrick Lewis is Scholar in Residence at the Filson Historical Society and is co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal, Ohio Valley History. A Trigg County, Kentucky, native, Lewis graduated from Transylvania University and holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Kentucky. He has worked for the National Park Service and the Kentucky Historical Society, and has won digital history grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Lewis is author of For Slavery and Union: Benjamin Buckner and Kentucky Loyalties in the Civil War (2015). He tweets about public history at @KyPLewis.

Dr. Ricky L. Jones

Dr. Ricky L. Jones is Professor and Chair of the University of Louisville’s Department of Pan-African Studies.

He is a contributing opinion columnist for the Courier-Journal and USA Today Network for which he was named 2018 “best editorial/opinion columnist” by the Society of Professional Journalists.

Visit him at: www.rickyljones.com

Follow on Twitter: @DrRickyLJones

Michael Morrow

Michael Morrow is the director of the SEEK Museum in Russellville, Kentucky.

Michael Morrow is the curator and director of the SEEK Museum. SEEK Museum, formerly known as the West Kentucky African American Heritage Center, is comprised of six historic buildings on two sites in Russellville, Kentucky. SEEK tells the history of the Struggles for Emancipation and Equality in Kentucky beginning with the enslavement of over 100 people at the Bibb House on West 8th Street in Russellville, followed by the emancipation of 99 people between 1832 and 1839 at that site. The story continues at the West Kentucky African American Heritage Center on East 6th Street with exhibits addressing the segregation and mob violence that followed the Civil War, the cultural heritage that developed in the Black Bottom National Register Historic District and the struggle for civil rights, including a park area dedicated to civil rights which features a bronze statue of Alice Allison Dunnigan, a Russellville native and civil rights pioneer.

Tours of either or both museum sites are available Wednesday – Saturday: 10 am – 4 pm, with prior email notification requested. Group Tours (including curriculum-based school tours) are available by appointment, with reduced fees for groups of 10 or more.

Episode Bibliography

1871 Testimony of Colored citizens of Frankfort, KY.

Bailey, Fred Arthur. “The Textbooks of the ‘Lost Cause’: Censorship and the Creation of Southern State Histories”. The Georgia Historical Quarterly, Fall 1991, Vol. 75, No. 3 (Fall 1991), pp. 507- 533 (http://www.jstor.com/stable/40582363)

Huffman, Greg. “Twisted Sources: How Confederate Propaganda Ended Up In The South’s Schoolbooks”, Facing South, April 10, 2019

Lewis, Patrick. (paid link) For Slavery and Union: Benjamin Buckner and Kentucky Loyalties in the Civil War. University Press of Kentucky, Mar 9, 2015

Marshall, Anne (paid link) Creating a Confederate Kentucky: The Lost Cause and Civil War Memory in a Border State. (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2010).

Pollard, Edward Alfred. The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates. United States: E. B. Treat, 1867.

United Daughters of the Confederacy.
The UDC Catechism for Children, Galveston, TX: “United Daughters of the Confederacy”, Veuve Jefferson Davis Chapter No. 17, 1904.1904

Williams, Kidada E. (paid link) They Left Great Marks on Me: African American Testimonies of Racial Violence from Emancipation to World War I. New York: NYU Press, 2012.

Wright, George C. (paid link) A History of Blacks in Kentucky: In Pursuit of Equality, 1890-1980 (Kentucky Historical Society).

Wright, George C. (paid link) Life Behind a Veil. Blacks in Louisville, Kentucky, 1865-1930 Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985.

Wright, George C. (paid link) Racial Violence in Kentucky 1865-1940 : Lynchings, Mob Rule, and Legal Lynchings.” Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1996.‌

Biographical Profile of Sgt. Alfred Jackson, 108th U.S. Colored Infantry

https://www.traditionrolex.com/16

See Footnotes

Featured Images of Military Records

Biographical Profile of Corp. Henry Lively, 108th U.S. Colored Infantry

See Footnotes

Featured Images of Military Records

Biographical Profile of Pvt. George Davis Long, 108th U.S. Colored Infantry

See Footnotes

Featured Images of Military Records

Biographical Profile of Pvt. Charles Mudd, 108th U.S. Colored Infantry

See Footnotes

Featured Images of Military Records

Biographical Profile of Corp. Wilson Weir, 108th U.S. Colored Infantry

See Footnotes

Featured Images of Military Records

Season One | Episode 10

Guests

Emily Bingham

Episode Bibliography

How to Subscribe to The Reckoning Podcast

Season One | Episode 9

Guests

Sadiqa N. Reynolds, esq.

Dr. Ricky L. Jones

Dr. Anita Fernander

Kidada Williams

William A. Darity, Jr.

Episode Bibliography

How to Subscribe to The Reckoning Podcast

Season One | Episode 8

Guests

Caleb McDaniel

Episode Bibliography

How to Subscribe to The Reckoning Podcast

Season One | Episode 7

Guests

Caleb McDaniel

Episode Bibliography

How to Subscribe to The Reckoning Podcast

Season One | Episode 6

Guests

George C. Wright

Anne Marshall

Kidada Williams

Dr. Patrick Lewis

Dr. Ricky L. Jones

Michael Morrow

Episode Bibliography

How to Subscribe to The Reckoning Podcast

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