POSTPONED: Emancipation In America, Seen Through One Man's Dreadlocks

This event has been postponed and will take place in the fall of 2020.

1864. A ship leaves its New England port carrying a USCT regiment to fight Confederates on the Louisiana front. But on the way, a showdown takes place when Pvt. John Green refuses his commanding officer's order to cut his hair, protesting that it was contrary to his religion. In the events that follow, a revealing picture of black self-assertion in the making of freedom emerges, one too often hidden by a Civil War master narrative. This paper tells John Green's story, and asks how we might look at emancipation differently when we view it through his dreadlocks.