By Angela Hatton
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wkms/local-wkms-954569.mp3
Fairview, KY – Civil War era re-enactors are nothing new for the region. But a group of all African-American women re-enactors is something special. The Female Re-Enactors of Distinction or FREED, recently visited and performed in the Clarksville, Tennessee and Hopkinsville area. The all-volunteer group is an auxiliary of the African-American Civil War Museum and Memorial in Washington, D. C. As Angela Hatton reports, their goal is to represent people who have been forgotten.
The Jefferson Davis Historic site is hard to miss. The obelisk rises up among acres of farmland and woods, eleven miles east of Hopkinsville. Some would say the monument is an unusual location for a performance by the women of FREED, though it isn't so strange for some of the historic figures portrayed, including Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley. Keckley was a seamstress who worked for many prominent families.
"I met someone who I think you know. A Mrs. Jefferson Davis. In my travels, I found myself sewing for her."
ZSun-nee Matema portrays Keckley. Matema and the other women dress in period costume consisting of hoop-skirts, bonnets, and shawls. They deliver their character's monologues to a small crowd inside a tent beneath the monument. Matema speaks gently to the spectators. She treats them as if they were a sewing class she's leading. Keckley eventually became a seamstress in the Lincoln White House. She was Mary Todd Lincoln's confidante, particularly after Abraham Lincoln's assassination.
"To help her out, because times were hard for her financially as well as emotionally, I began to collect the stories I had for her and put them in a book. And that very book, Behind the Scenes, created a lot of heartache. I never, ever, intended for that to be the way things turned out. I was only trying to help, but her son thought it was without mercy."
Robert Lincoln suppressed the book, and Keckley never earned any money from its publication. She died a pauper. Many of the women portrayed by FREED had brilliant careers, but died without any money. That includes Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, a singer known as "the black swan," who performed internationally. Judy Williams plays Greenfield.
"During the Civil War, I had some conflicts, let's say, with the well-known orator Frederick Douglass. Why? Because all of my concerts were done at places where no colored persons could come in."
Douglass wrote negative reviews about Greenfield though he had never heard her sing. Greenfield did do concerts for African-American groups, including orphans and the elderly. When Douglass got a chance to hear Greenfield sing, he changed his tune. In her later years she taught vocal lessons. She died alone in Philadelphia.
"But I was not forgotten because years later a man by the name of W. C. Handy started the first African-American recording company and he named it the Black Swan."
FREED portrays women who were schoolteachers, nurses, and evangelists. They even give a voice to the "nameless Civil War woman." The group started during the fifth anniversary of the African-American Civil War Museum and Memorial in Washington D. C. Judy Williams says some women on the anniversary committee decided to celebrate the occasion with period costumes.
"So we all ran out and rented outfits to wear, and we were received so warmly and with such excitement, that the director, the founding director Dr. Frank Smith, said why don't you all form a group, and I will buy your first outfits for you, which is what he did."
The group keeps a full schedule, appearing mainly at sites in the Washington, D. C. and Baltimore area. The Mount Olive Cemetery Preservation Society of Clarksville commissioned the ladies to come to Tennessee and Kentucky for a week of events. Geneva Bell is Director and President of Mount Olive. She says FREED doesn't charge for their performances, but to cover travel expenses, the society raised ten thousand dollars. She says the expense was worth it.
"And coming here, it's really something because the Jefferson Davis from what I've heard is not something we really want to be around. But that's in the past. We gotta live for today."
Bell says performing at the Jefferson Davis Historic site is a way of showing that the ideals Davis and other confederate leaders championed are dying out.
"We're saying it's OK, Mr. Davis. You did your due, now it's our turn."
After the performance, the group gathers outside in the park in the shadow of the monument for a picture. The FREED members proudly point out that while they have been together for over five years, they have never had a formal organizational charter. The women stick together because they are all dedicated to the same goal, ensuring history is inclusive.