Monument, Commemoration, and Interpretation at the Corinth Contraband Camp

After the Battle of Shiloh and with the Union occupation of Corinth, Mississippi, in April-May 1862, formerly enslaved women, men, and children sought refuge behind Union lines. Considered “contraband of war,” the newly freed became part of the army’s labor force, and established a sizeable community in the town. For over a year, the Corinth Contraband Camp functioned as a “model” camp with wooden houses, kitchen gardens, a store, a two-room school, a hospital, and a church. Literacy and self-sufficiency underscored all activity at the site. By December 1863, the Union army relocated the residents to Memphis in a larger effort to consolidate contraband camps in the Mississippi Valley.

In July 2004, the National Park Service (NPS) opened the first Civil War Interpretive Center in Corinth, presenting a multidimensional historical experience with extensive interpretation of black life at the site. The artists, Larry and Andrea Lugar, delivered the first of their six life-size, bronze statues that depict formerly enslaved African Americans to the Corinth Contraband Camp in October 2008. Placed on a ¼ mile circular trail, visitors first encounter a statue of an emancipated woman and introductory texts. The other sculptures are placed at intervals on the circuit and include a laundress, a woman and child reading, Chaplain James M. Alexander offering a book to a young boy, a USCT soldier, and a farmer. Modeled with attention to nineteenth-century dress and based on historical photographs, the figures suggest the spectral presence of the newly freed women, men, and children. This paper investigates how the commemorative forms reveal the thorny visual issues of representing and embodying historical “contrabands” in the present. It also explores how the artists and NPS worked to create an “emotional connection” between contemporary visitors and the historical figures through readily understandable and idealized depictions.