Come visit the Spring Hill Historic Home for an Ohio Humanities’ Speakers’ Bureau event with Kelly Mezurek!

Dr. Mezurek will be discussing her book, For their Own Cause: The 27th United States Colored Troops (The Kent State University Press, 2016), which explores the story of the 27th USCT in the Civil War. From the inside cover: “The men faced daily battles against racism and against inferior treatment, training, and supplies. They suffered from the physical difficulties of military life, the horrors of warfare, and homesickness and worried about loved ones left at home without financial support. Yet their contributions provided a tool that allowed blacks with little military experience, and their families, to demand social acceptance and acknowledgment of their citizenship.”

Kelly D. Mezurek is a professor of history at Walsh University, where she teaches United States history. Her book, For their Own Cause: The 27th United States Colored Troops (The Kent State University Press, 2016), is a 2017 Ohioana Book Award Finalist in nonfiction. Mezurek has also published “‘The Colored Veteran Soldiers Should Receive the Same Tender Care’: Soldiers’ Homes, Race, and the Post-Civil War Midwest” in The War Went On: Reconsidering the Lives of Civil War Veterans and “‘De Bottom Rails on Top Now’: Black Union Guards and Confederate Prisoners of War,” in Crossing the Deadlines: Civil War Prisons Reconsidered. Mezurek is a past executive board member of the Ohio Academy of History, and was a representative on the Ohio Civil War 150 Advisory Committee.