New Park Honors Role of Freed Slaves in Civil War

The Corinth Contraband Camp is a new park that memorializes the only such place in Mississippi, where freed slaves lived during the Civil War.

A new park has opened in Corinth that celebrates a forgotten part of Mississippi’s Civil War history. MPB’s Cari Gervin has the story of the state’s one and only contraband camp.

From a distance, you might think Saturday’s celebration in Corinth was just another Memorial Day affair.

But if you came a bit closer, you’d realize the people being honored at this newest extension of Shiloh National Military Park were, for the most part, not soldiers.

Senator Thad Cochran explains:

“We’re lucky to be standing here on the physical site of the camp. One can imagine the churches, commissaries, the homes of former slaves who lived in this community.”

The Corinth Contraband Camp was the only such camp in the state. There were several throughout the South, places where freed slaves gathered to start their new lives after the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862. Because supporters of the Confederacy did not recognize President Lincoln’s authority, the former slaves were considered contraband – that is, illegal commodities.

At its peak in 1863, the camp housed 6,000 men, women and children. But when the Union soldiers abandoned Corinth in 1864, the camp fell apart and most of its inhabitants moved to Memphis.

Woody Harrell, the superintendant of Shiloh National Military Park, says the contraband camp is a huge acquisition.

“And I would say this is the most important piece of real estate that has come in. The story of the contraband camp is one that was passing from general knowledge, and really, it’s what the civil war was all about.”

The park has been in the works for almost a decade. Bronzes figures depicting the lives of camp residents are placed strategically on a pathway around an open green field.

Pausing to look at one, William Anderson says he feels profoundly moved.

“But I’m still in the dark as to the totality of what is must have meant then, and how the people had to have felt under that brand-new freedom, and full of anxieties and at the same time, the joy of freedom kind of mixed in there. And God only knows how they handled it.”

The Corinth Contraband Camp is free and open daily. For MPB News, I’m Cari Gervin.