General Edmund Kirby Smith, Black Confederate

Were some of the soldiers in the Confederacy black? Derek Boyd Hankerson, a Florida native and political operative for the right, likes to think that thousands of black slaves also fought on the side of the south during the Civil War. Read more about this online at the Civil War Memory blog, by Kevin M. Levin.

Key Takeaways:

• Hankerson recently co-authored a book on the subject with Judith Shearer, titled, Belonging: The Civil War’s South We Never Knew.
• Hankerson believes that Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith was black. Readers will also be surprised to hear that Kirby Smith attended the “prestigious Southern school” at West Point.
• The other frustrating aspect of this HNN piece is the reference to John Stauffer’s recent essay at The Root, which created quite a stir when it was published in early 2015.

“The other frustrating aspect of this HNN piece is the reference to John Stauffer’s recent essay at The Root, which attempted to establish the presence of somewhere between 3,000 and 10,000 black Confederate soldiers.”

http://cwmemory.com/2016/08/10/general-edmund-kirby-smith-black-confederate/