Community Corner

Why I'm A Civil War Re-enactor

One Atlantan explains the importance of remembering, understanding history

April 12 marked the 150th anniversary of the start of the Amercan Civil War.

Here, in East Atlanta Patch, July 22 marks the 147th anniversary of the Battle of Atlanta. The battle, fought in what is present day East Atlanta Village, Kirkwood and adjoining neighborhoods, some 12,000 Union and Confederate troops lost their lives.

The BATL organization, which commemorates the bloody fight, has a series of events planned this week, including living history exhibitions featuring re-enactors who serve to give people a true glimpse into 19th century America.

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Recently, East Atlanta Patch spoke with Marvin-Alonzo Greer, a Civil War re-enactor, who has participated in the Battle of Atlanta commemorations as well as in battle recreations  elsewhere around the country.

A native of California, Greer says these re-enactments are more than just wearing period clothes and nostalgic longing for the glory days of the Old South.

Find out what's happening in East Atlantawith free, real-time updates from Patch.

As an African-American, being a re-enactor — portraying a slave, free Southerner or Northerner, or soldier in the U.S. Colored Troops— gives Greer a chance to help tell the stories of and memorialize the history of those he called the voiceless.

"A lot of African-Americans, especially in the South, don't really want to talk about the Civil War because it has been monopolized by heritage groups that make the American Civil War something that it is not," Greer, a Morehouse College history major, said. "It's important to represent those who had no voice."

Greer, who has performed in re-enactments the better part of a decade, looks at them as a way to deconstruct what he says is — after the Revolutionary War — the most important event in American history.

"To really understand American society today, you have to understand what took place during those four bloody years," he said.


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