Ian Michael Spurgeon, author of Soldiers in the Army of Freedom: The 1st Kansas Colored, The Civil War’s First African American Combat Unit, will give a book talk and sign books on Thursday, February 11, 2016, 7 p.m., at the Dorothy Bramlage Public Library, 320 W. 7th St. in Junction City, Kansas. The program is sponsored by Prairie Heritage, Inc.
The president of Prairie Heritage, Inc., Junction City Commissioner
Jim Sands, will present the author with the Prairie Heritage Book Award at the beginning of the program on February 11. The award comes with a cash prize of $1000.00.
The individuals described in the book were amazing people who fought not only against the Confederacy but against discrimination and skepticism within the Union army. Their sacrifices and successes are commemorated in the eight battle honors listed on their regimental flag—Poison Spring, Camden, Jenkins Ferry, Sherwood, Island Mound, Cabin Creek, Honey Springs, and Prairie-de-Anne. The book’s cover photo depicts Captain William D. Matthews, a free Kansan who recruited soldiers for the unit and who became one of the regiment’s two Black officers.
Spurgeon shares first-place honors with Iralee Barnard, author ofField Guide to the Common Grasses of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska, who received her award in December. Both authors receive the full $1000 award. As Prairie Heritage board member Deliliah Hamilton explains, “Both books were tops in their fields, one in social history, the other in natural history. How could we compare the two? We had to give two awards.”
Prairie Heritage, Inc., is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation dedicated to preserving the prairie and its stories. In addition to honoring books that illuminate the prairie’s heritage, it sponsors workshops, history talks, and once a year, in conjunction with Juneteenth, a wildflower walk on the tall grass prairie.