From its emergence out of the ashes of the U.S. Civil War in 1865, to a 20th-century version of the group depicted in the 2018 Academy award-winning movie, BlacKkKlansman, the Ku Klux Klan hate group has been an enduring topic of study for more than 150 years.
It’s the subject of “Battling the Ku Klux Klan,” one of four presentations kicking off the 27th Annual Symposium on the 19th-century Press, the Civil War and Free Expression Civil War Press Symposium on Thursday, Nov. 7, at the Chattanooga Marriott Downtown. The yearly meeting of scholars and students who share research is hosted by the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
Thursday’s opening presentations begin at 7 p.m. and also include “History as Method,” “Yankee Reporters and Southern Secrets” and “General Rutherford B. Hayes and the Civil War Press.” All sessions, which continue on Friday and Saturday, Nov. 8-9, in the UTC University Center, are free and open to the public.
The symposium will feature 34 speakers from across the nation and beyond, including prominent scholars such as Donald Shaw, creator of the agenda-setting theory of the press; Brian Gabrial, author of The Press and Slavery in America; Berry Craig, author of Kentucky’s Rebel Press; David Weaver, author of The American Journalist in the Digital Age; and Menahem Blondheim, former director of the Truman Institute of Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
“We are particularly pleased that many of the early supporters of the conference and leaders of the field of journalism history will be presenting papers this year,” said David B. Sachsman, director of the conference and UTC professor and holder of the UTC West Chair of Excellence in Communication and Public Affairs.
The conference’s purpose is sharing current research and developing a series of monographs on the 19th-century press, the Civil War and the press and 19th-century concepts of free expression. Papers presented at the first five conferences were published by Transaction Publishers in 2000 as a book of readings called The Civil War and the Press.
Purdue University Press published papers from past conferences in three books titled Memory and Myth: The Civil War in Fiction and Film from Uncle Tom’s Cabin to Cold Mountain (2007), Words at War: The Civil War and American Journalism (2008), and Seeking a Voice: Images of Race and Gender in the 19th Century Press (2009).
The full day of 22 conference presentations on Friday, Nov. 8, will take place in the UTC University Center Raccoon Mountain Room. Topics include “The Southern Press, Slavery, and Nationalism in the Secession Crisis,” “The Court-Martial of Fitz John Porter and the Press,” “The Jewish Messenger’s Hebrew Lincoln Acrostic,” “Newspapers Debate Manifest Destiny” and “The 19th-Century Press and American Popular Culture.”
On Saturday, Nov. 9, presentations are from 9 a.m.-noon in the UTC University Center Chickamauga Room. Topics include “Kentucky’s Rebel Press,” the “New York City Draft Riots” and the “1876 Presidential Election.” Saturday’s session concludes with a presentation by James Ogden, historian of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park & Moccasin Bend National Archeological District. Ogden will lead a tour of Chattanooga’s historic Civil War sites Saturday afternoon.
The symposium is sponsored by the West Chair of Excellence, the UTC Depart,ent of Communication, the Walter and Leona Schmitt Family Foundation Research Fund and the Hazel Dicken-Garcia Fund for the Symposium. Sponsorship makes all sessions free and open to the public.
For more information, call David Sachsman at 423-425-4219 or email david-sachsman@utc.edu.
