Scholar - Women Also Know History

Participant Info

Keywords: "Black Men in Lincoln Blue" - United States Colored Troops and Black men in the Navy (as soldiers and veterans), Civil War-era Letters and Diaries, Northern Women during Civil War

About Me: Kelly D. Mezurek is a professor of history at Walsh University, North Canton, Ohio. Her book, For their Own Cause: The 27th United States Colored Troops (2016), is available from The Kent State University Press and is a finalist for the 2017 Ohioana Nonfiction Book Award. Mezurek’s essay, “‘De Bottom Rails on Top Now’: Black Union Guards and Confederate Prisoners of War,” is included in Crossing the Deadlines: Civil War Prisons Reconsidered, edited by Michael P. Gray with a forward by John T. Hubbell (forthcoming October 2018, The Kent State University Press). She is currently working on a manuscript that explores the epistolary practices of the soldiers and family members of the United States Colored Troops during the American Civil War. Mezurek has spoken to groups all over the state as a member of the Ohio Humanities Speakers Bureau, including presentations on “Ohio Women and the Civil War Home Front” and “Black Men in Blue: The Civil War, Ohioans, and the United States Colored Troops.” Mezurek has served on the advisory board for the Emerging Civil War Book Series with the Southern Illinois University Press and as a member of the Ohio Civil War 150 Advisory Committee.

Recent Publications: “The Colored Veteran Soldiers Should Receive the Same Tender Care”: Black Veterans, Soldiers’ Homes, and the Post-Civil War Midwest,” in The War Went On: Reconsidering the Lives of Civil War Veterans, edited by Brian Matthew Jordan and Evan C. Rothera. Louisiana State Universality Press, 2020.

‘“De Bottom Rails on Top Now”: Black Union Guards and Confederate Prisoners of War,” in Crossing the Deadlines: Civil War Prisons Reconsidered, edited by Michael P. Gray and forward by John T. Hubbell. The Kent State University Press, 2018.

“Civil War Incarceration in History and Memory: A Roundtable.” Civil War History. Vol. 63, No. 3, September 2017.

Editor, Dear Mother: The Letters of William C. Quantrill to his Mother Caroline, 1885-1860. Dover, Ohio: Dover Historical Society, 2017.

For Their Own Cause: The 27th United States Colored Troops. The Kent State University Press, October 2016.

“Aid Societies.” The World of the Civil War: A Daily Life Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2015.

“Contraband Relief Association,” “Gunboat Societies,” and “Emily E. Parsons.” Women in the Civil War: An Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2008.