Contraband and Freedmen's Cemetery Memorial
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A presentation by Fran Bromberg about the creation, forgetting, and rededication of the cemetery on South Washington Street
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Emancipation: A Step into the Unknown
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About 500,000 left slavery during the Civil War. As Chandra Manning's new book details, they took enormous risks in their search for freedom.
Read MoreFinding Descendants from Alexandria's Contraband and Freedmen Cemetery
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Char McCargo Bah explained how she found descendants from among more than 1,750 people buried in Alexandria's Contraband and Freedmen Cemetery--who can now celebrate their ancestors, many of whom escaped slavery.
Read MoreCemeteries in Old Alexandria
/Last night's episode of Mercy Street included a poignant scene in which the Green and Fairfax families attempted to bury Tom Fairfax. No matter one's sympathies, seeing a funeral disrupted at gunpoint was not pleasant.
Read MoreHarriet Jacobs and Julia Wilbur: Two Other "Heroines"
/With my own research in mind, I can't resist proposing Julia Wilbur and Harriet Jacobs as two other real-life heroines of Mercy Street.
Read More"Contrabands" in Alexandria
/One of Mercy Street's characters with perhaps the most compelling back story (not that we know much of it, at least not now) is Aurelia, the African American laundress who is victimized by the brutish steward, Mr. Bullen. I don't remember if they specifically refer to her as a "contraband," but I know the word came up during the program. Here's a little background.
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