1251 US Route 319, Thomasville
Jack Hadley will offer a walking tour of Pebble Hill and provide an overview of the role Black workers played in maintaining this hunting plantation. This tour will be documented by our videographer so it can serve as permanent resource for attendees.
Given the distance and remote location of Pebble Hill and nearby restaurants, we plan to provide a boxed lunch for attendees.
Dr. Piehler will discuss questions of memory and race in shaping the legacy of the Civil War after 1865. Despite losing the Civil War, many scholars argue that White southerners initially won the battle over the memory of this conflict. Beginning in earnest in the 1880s, veterans of the Confederate army started joining veteran organizations. Many communities, including Thomasville, started to erect monuments to the Lost Cause. To promote national reconciliation, White northerners embraced a memory of the war that minimized the legacy of slavery and sought to stress remembering the bravery and sacrifice of combat veterans of both sides of the conflict. Like other southern towns, Thomasville had an active chapter of the United Confederate Veterans. Dr. Piehler will emphasize that Black citizens in Thomasville and across the nation, kept alive the memory of the Civil War as a battle cry for freedom. Although many northerners were more willing to remember the legacy of the Civil War in ending slavery, relatively few Civil War monuments commemorating Union soldiers have representations of African American troops. One of the few notable exceptions in the monument outside of the Boston statehouse commemorating the service of the Massachusetts 54th dedicated in 1897. Dr. Piehler will conclude his session by examining how the world wars influenced the memory of the Civil War in Thomasville and nationally.
600 East Washington Street, Thomasville
The Thomasville History Center is pleased to invite the general public to attend a lecture by Professor Le’Trice Donaldson titled “The Life and Times of Henry O. Flipper.” on Wednesday, July 12. 2023 at the Thomasville Center for the Arts. No reservations are necessary for this free event that will begin at 7:00 p.m., a reception and book signing will follow the lecture. The Thomasville Center for the Arts is located at 600 E. Washington Street in Thomasville, Georgia.
Born enslaved in Thomasville, Georgia on the eve of the Civil War, Henry O. Flipper became the first African American graduate at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Retired General Lloyd Austin, current U.S. Secretary of Defense, is a native of Thomasville and a distant relative of Flipper. Donaldson is assistant professor of history at Texas A & M University- Corpus Christi and author of Duty Beyond the Battlefield: African Americans Soldiers Fight for Racial Uplift, Citizenship, and Manhood, 1870-1920 (Southern Illinois Press).
This lecture has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH): Democracy demands wisdom. K-12 educators from across the nation will be attending this lecture as part of a one-week funded NEH Landmarks in American History workshop The Quest for Freedom examining the Long Civil rights movement. As part of the workshop teachers will engage in place-based learning and will visit such sites as the Thomasville History Center, Tall Timbers, the Jack Hadley Black History Museum, Pebble Hill Plantation and Museum and the First Missionary Baptist Church.
Workshop Concludes For the Day