Wednesday February 8, 2012

The North Shore Civil War Roundtable will celebrate our 16th year anniversary at Mac's Steakhouse of Huntington.

Coming January 5, 2012

Author Cheryl Wills will discuss her new book, Die Free: a Heroic Family Tale, which traces her great-great-great grandfather Sandy Wills' courageous service in the Civil War as a member of the United States Colored Troops.

Cheryl Wills is an award-winning anchor and reporter for Time Warner Cable’s flagship national news network, New York 1 News, based in New York City. On March 25, 2011, Cheryl Wills made history as the first journalist invited to speak inside the United Nations General Assembly Hall for the International Remembrance of Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Cheryl is also a blogger for the internationally renowned The Huffington Post and she contributes to Essence.com. She has received numerous awards for her work including New York Press Club and AP Awards, the YMCA National Black Achievers in Industry Award, and the Carl T. Rowan Leadership in Media Award as part of the 25th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Awards. In 2010, McDonald’s honored Wills as a broadcasting legend during a regional ad campaign.

Her acting work has included playing herself in television shows like NBC's Law & Order SVU and major motion pictures such as Freedomland, starring Samuel Jackson, and The Brave One, with Jodie Foster and Terrence Howard. Wills is a graduate of the S.I. Newhouse School at Syracuse University, and is an active member of The Inner Circle of City Hall Journalists, The National Association of Black Journalists, The New York Press Club, The Links Inc., and The Screen Actors Guild. Cheryl is also proud to be a The Founding Commander of the New York Chapter of the "Sons & Daughters of the United States Colored Troops".

Coming Thursday December 15:

In Starving the South, Andrew Smith takes a gastronomical look at the war’s outcome and legacy. While the war split the country in a way that still affects race and politics today, it also affected the way we eat: It transformed local markets into nationalized food suppliers, forced the development of a Northern canning industry, established Thanksgiving as a national holiday and forged the first true national cuisine from the recipes of emancipated slaves who migrated north. On the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Fort Sumter, Andrew Smith is the first to ask “Did hunger defeat the Confederacy?”. (From Amazon.com)

(From Andrew Smith’s web site) Mr. Smith is a freelance writer and speaker on culinary matters. He teaches culinary history and professional food writing at the New School in Manhattan, serves as the General Editor of the Food Series at the University of Illinois Press, and is the general editor for the Edible Series at Reaktion Press in the United Kingdom. He is also the editor-in-chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia on Food and Drink in America and the Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink. Mr. Smith has delivered more than fifteen hundred presentations on various educational, historical, and international topics, and has organized seventy-three major conferences. He has been frequently interviewed by and quoted in newspapers, journals and magazines, such as the New York Times, New Yorker, Reader's Digest, Los Angeles Times, Atlanta Constitution, Chicago Tribune, Fortune Magazine and The Wall Street Journal. I have been regularly interviewed on radio and television, including National Public Radio and the Food Network.

Coming Wednesday November 2, 2012

Oyster Bay Town Historian John Hammond will discuss Oyster Bay in the Civil War. In a new book, Images of America: Oyster Bay, Town Historian John E. Hammond uses more than 200 vintage photographs to take readers on a nostalgic journey of Oyster Bay. He has recently compiled a book about original Civil War documents in the town clerk’s records, Civil War Records: Town of Oyster Bay which includes enlistments, bounties paid for enlisting, and registration records to see who was eligible for the draft. The book also covers local Civil War soldiers, including many black volunteers such as David Carll, great-great-grandfather of actress Vanessa Williams. The publication will be a guide to official Oyster Bay records and include an alphabetical index of the more than 600 soldiers and sailors from the town that then had a population of about 8,000.

Coming Thursday October 6, 2012

Dr. Stanley Harrrold will discuss his book Border War: Fighting Over Slavery Before The Civil War. “Border War” examines the previously neglected violent cross-border clashes between the Lower North and Border South that began several generations before the Civil War. By the 1840s and 1850s, a dangerous ferment afflicted the North-South border region, pitting the slave states of Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri against the free states of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. In “Border War,” Harrold explores many facets of this conflict. “In ‘Border War,’ I depict aspects of the slavery struggle, including the Underground Railroad, enforcement of the fugitive slave laws, mob actions and sectional antagonism,” Harrold explains. Harrold, who began teaching history at SC State University more than 30 years ago, wrote seven books prior to “Border War.” Most of them portray the complex dynamics leading to the Civil War. (South Carolina State University web site)

Coming September 8th, 2011

The North Shore Civil War Roundtable will begin its 17th year with a welcome back warmer and Collector's Showcase. The evening will be hosted by the Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities (SPLIA) on Main Street in Cold Spring Harbor. Wine and cheese will be served along with "fiddle" Civil War era music. Roundtable members will display their Civil War collections of firearms, ephemera and memorabilia.

Coming July 7th, 2011

Michael Russert is a frequent speaker at our Roundtable. This evening Mike will present a lecture entitled The Reorganization of the New York State Militia Before the Civil War. Mike has written several articles about the Civil War and has served as a tour guide to the Gettysburg Battlefield. He is a native of Buffalo, NY and currently resides in Cambridge, NY. He is on the book review staff of The Civil War News and Multicultural Journal. Mike is a member of the North Shore Civil War Roundtable and the Company of Military Historians. He was the former Director of the New York State Veterans Oral History Program.