A passion for history was on display at the USS Cairo Saturday as a team of guest speakers volunteered their day to provide visitors with Civil War-era discussion related to Black History Month.

Saturday’s program was part of a month-long series of special programs at the Vicksburg National Military Park on the theme, A Free People on a Free River: The African-American Experience in Occupied Vicksburg.

Originally planned as a series of 15-minute programs, the presentations became less structured and informal in response to interaction with park visitors, chief ranger Tim Kavanaugh said. Volunteer historians stood and talked with visitors as they arrived, rather than waiting for a specific time to begin.

About 100 visitors filtered through during the day, Kavanaugh said, in groups averaging eight to 12. A Boy Scout troop from Germantown, Tenn., swelled the ranks at one point, and cars sporting license plates from as far away as Iowa and Minnesota were in the parking lot near the historic boat.

“It’s given visitors a variety of different perspectives,” Kavanaugh said. Each historian took a particular topic, including African-Americans in the U.S. Navy; contrabands and freedmen; northern humanitarian aid to the freedmen; and the response of white Southerners to freedmen.

“Contraband” was the term used for fugitive slaves who sought protection behind Union lines.

Among the volunteers were Will Wilson, a graduate student at Jackson State University; Rodney Wince, also of JSU; James McNair, a student a Hinds Community College; Tommy Fehn, another Hinds undergraduate at Hinds. Park rangers Rodney West, Dave Slay and Kavanaugh were also on hand.

“It feeds the passion that I have for history,” McNair said. “I thoroughly enjoy it.”

Fehn said his approach to talking about history with visitors is to treat it as storytelling, making it immediate and memorable.

Several events and political trends in 1862 contributed to Lincoln’s decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862, Kavanaugh said, and it radically altered the course of the war.

“Vicksburg became a magnet for freedmen,” Kavanaugh said. “Thirty thousand black troops enlisted in the Union army here.”

In total more than 400,000 blacks served with Union forces before the war’s end, including 185,000 combat troops in the cavalry, artillery and infantry.

It represented the first organized service of black soldiers in the nation’s history, and was not repeated until 1947, when President Truman integrated the U.S. Army.

In contrast, McNair said, the U.S. Navy has always been integrated, with African-Americans having served even during the Revolutionary War. Four black sailors served on the Cairo, he said.

“Vicksburg really was a microcosm of society at the time,” Wilson said, with freedmen, enlisted soldiers, sailors, and later martial law enforced by former slaves.

The city’s history reflects the complete change to the social order that was initiated by the Emancipation Proclamation and sustained during the final years of the war and Reconstruction.

Though this marked the first year the park tried this particular approach, Kavanaugh said Black History Month is always observed there, often with posters or some sort of presentation.

Park officials said they have have been pleased with the response.

The informal presentations will continue Saturdays until the end of the month, and next weekend will include a re-enactment group staging “a living history encampment,” Kavanaugh said.

“The whole concept is really just to get the information out,” Wilson said. “Once you do, people will have a better appreciation of it.”

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Contact Pamela Hitchins at phitchins@vicksburgpost.com.