The “Remembering the Civil War” series has been going on since the fall of 2011. Altogether, there have been eight events over the span of four years.

The Nov. 10 presentation was the eighth and final symposium in the series, held in Charter Hall 217 at 6:30 p.m.

Dr. Joan Gittens, Dr. Jeff Kolnick, and University Supervisor Lloyd Petersen were the featured speakers at this final event.

Petersen presented “History of the Civil War through Music.”

Kolnick spoke on the topic of Black Lives Matter: The Enduring Legacy of Reconstruction.

Gittens talked about “The Negro’s Hour”: The 14^th and 15^th Amendments and the Struggle Over Votes for Women.

The series has covered a wide variety of topics, including military aspects of the war; foreign policy issues; economic and political developments of the time; Civil War prisons in the North and South; the medical conditions of the time; the fierce and sometimes violent opposition to the war in the North; the role of religion in the war; the impact of photography; the writings of the poet Walt Whitman and the diarist Mary Chestnut; the country’s struggles to come to terms with slavery and the response of the slaves themselves to the possibility of freedom; and the developing philosophy of Abraham Lincoln, especially on the purpose of the war and the issue of emancipation.

The series was sponsored by the SMSU History Club and the SMSU History Program. It was free and open to the public.