Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites

Edna Greene Medford

2023 R. Gerald McMurtry Lecture

Edna Greene Medford, Professor Emeritus, Department of History, Howard University

The Pursuit of Freedom in a “Free” State: The Emancipation Proclamation’s Significance to African Americans in Indiana

Dr. Edna Greene Medford is professor emeritus and the former chairperson of the department of history at Howard University, specializing in slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction. Her books include Lincoln and Emancipation (2015) and The Emancipation Proclamation: Three Views (co-authored with Harold Holzer and Frank Williams, 2006). She also edited Historical Perspectives of the African Burial Ground: New York Blacks and the Diaspora. Medford is currently working on a book about William Trail of Henry County, Ind., whose four sons served with the United States Colored Troops during the Civil War.

The McMurtry Lecture is made possible with support from the Friends of the Lincoln Collection of Indiana.