KURE BEACH — State officials recently joined Lumbee Tribe and American Indian tribal leaders from across North Carolina to officially debut the state’s newest exhibit at Fort Fisher.
The exhibit honors Lumbee men who were conscripted and forced to work at Fort Fisher during the Civil War.
The new exhibit at Fort Fisher State Historic Site is titled “A Memory A People Could Not Forget: Lumbee Indians at Fort Fisher.” It depicts the vital role played by Lumbee Indians in building the fort’s massive earthworks, alongside free and enslaved African Americans. Faced with the reality of conscription and brutal working conditions, the Lumbees endured seemingly endless labor demands in building what came to be known as the Gibraltar of the South.
Also on hand for the exhibit debut was Michelle Lanier, director if the N.C. Division of State Historic Sites; Sarah Koonts, acting deputy secretary and state archivist; Pamela B. Cashwell, secretary of the Department of Administration; The University of North Carolina at Pembroke Chancellor Robin Cummings; Nancy Fields, director of the Museum of the Southeast American Indian; and Greg Richardson, director of the NC Commission of Indian Affairs.
More than a million people are expected to see the exhibit over the next year.
“That’s a lot of people who are going to learn about the Lumbee,” Lumbee Tribal Chairman Harvey Godwin Jr. said. “People know about the Lumbee now but they don’t know about the hardship our people have been through — our ancestors, what they had to endure for us to even be at this point in time six generations later.”
The exhibit was guest curated by the Museum of the Southeast American Indian and the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. The exhibit uses text, maps, photographs, and diagrams to show the grim price paid by individuals transported more than a hundred miles from home to construct the colossal Confederate fortress.
Fort Fisher State Historic Site is located at 1610 Fort Fisher Blvd. South in Kure Beach.