I believe in research and scholarly excavation as a solid foundation when approaching any creative work. This list is a compilation of a few of the books that are informing my solo show Blackbirding as well as this most recent Black Americana song cycle, inspired by pivotal moments in battle strategy, infamous stories of heroism and cowardice, bizarre monuments -- and of course, the blood-soaked land itself.
Gettysburg: The Booklist
- Celia, A Slave: A True Story by Melton A. Mclaurin
- African Americans and the Gettysburg Campaign by James M. Paradis
- The Colors of Courage: Gettysburg's Forgotten History: Immigrants, Women and African-Americans in the Civil War's Defining Battle by Margaret S.S. Creighton
- Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War's Most Persistent Myth by Kevin M. Levin
- Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped Into Slavery and Their Astonishing Odysssey Home by Richard Bell
- Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America by W. Caleb McDaniel
- Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit Of Their Runaway Slave Ona Judge by Erica Armstrong Dunbar
- Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction by Eric Foner
- Every Drop of Blood: The Momentous Second Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln by Edward Achorn
- Maine Roads to Gettysburg: How Joshua Chamberlain, Oliver Howard and 4,000 Men From the Pine Tree State Helped Win the Civil War's Bloodiest Battle by Tom Huntington
- "Too Much For Human Endurance": The George Spangler Farm Hospitals and the Battle of Gettysburg by Ronald D. Kirkwood
- A Vast Sea of Misery: A History and Guide to the Union and Confederate Field Hospitals at Gettysburg, July 1 - November 20, 1863 by Gregory A. Coco
- The Immortal Irishman: The Irish Revolutionary Who Became An American Hero by Timothy Egan
- Dixie's Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture by Karen L. Cox
- Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice by David M. Oshinsky
- This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust