'Choctaw Confederates' - Presentation by Dr. Fay A. Yarbrough - 2/22/2022

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About the Video:
Dr. Fay A. Yarbrough speaks about the topic of her publication "Choctaw Confederates; The American Civil War in the Indian Country." She gave the presentation via Zoom on February 22, 2022, to the Civil War Round Table of the District of Columbia. Introduction by Kurt DeSoto, President of the CWRTDC. Questions and answers follow the presentation.

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About the Topic:
The Choctaw Nation officially sided with the Confederacy during the American Civil War. Choctaw legal authorities even deemed any criticism of the Confederacy or of the Confederate army to be a form of treason against the Choctaw Nation and punishable by death. What accounts for this level of commitment to the Confederate cause among the Choctaws? Dr. Yarbrough draws upon Choctaw legislative documents, narratives from enslaved people and residents of Indian Territory, and military records from the 1st Choctaw Mounted Rifles to answer this question and illuminate the Civil War experience in Indian Territory.

About the Speaker:
Dr. Fay A. Yarbrough received her doctorate in American history from Emory University and completed her undergraduate degree at Rice University. Her research interests center on interactions between Native peoples and people of African descent in the nineteenth-century. She published the monograph Race and the Cherokee Nation: Sovereignty in the Nineteenth Century (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008) and coedited with Sandra Slater an essay collection titled Gender and Sexuality in Indigenous North America, 1400-1850 (University of South Carolina Press, 2011).

Dr. Yarbrough's work has also appeared in the Journal of Social History, Journal of Southern History, and the edited volumes Race and Science and Civil War Wests: Testing the Limits of the United States. In 2020 she was the visiting editor at the Journal of Southern History.

At Rice University, Dr. Yarbrough's academic titles include Professor of History, and affiliated faculty with the Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality and the Center for African and African American Studies. She previously taught at the University of Kentucky and the University of Oklahoma. She is currently the Associate Dean of Humanities for Undergraduate Programs and Special Projects.

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Thanks to CWRTDC members Paul Mazzuca, for managing the Zoom meeting, and John Ciccone for video and audio post-production.