Calvin Osborne: 0:00

My uh my colleagues, my Civil War buddies tell me that uh in the middle of the making of the movie they had a discussion with Denzel Washington and they and uh and he uh he said something I don't know if it's true or not, but this is a story. They said that uh Denzel told them that, hey, you you all you all know you want to know the difference between actors and re-enactors. And they said, what's the difference? What's the difference? We we're all acting like soldiers, we got uniform look. He said, we get paid and you guys don't.

Crista Cowan: 0:24

Stories that live in us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present, and future. I'm Crista Cowan, known online as The Barefoot Genealogist. Counting down to the upcoming celebration of America's 250th birthday, you'll meet families from each state whose stories are woven into the very fabric of America. Tales of immigration, migration, courage, and community that remind us that when we tell our stories, we strengthen the bonds that connect us. So join me for season two as we discover from sea to shining sea the stories that live in us. Do you ever have a conversation with someone that you wish would just keep going? My guest today is one of those kinds of people that you just want to sit and listen to and ask questions of. He is brilliant, but he is also a brilliant storyteller. Calvin Osborne is a Washington, D.C. area attorney who several times a year heads out onto a battlefield to do Civil War reenactment. And I'm fascinated by that. He is a student of particularly African-American military history. Now, in the DC area, he's affiliated with the Massachusetts 54th as a reenactor. But he has recently, through his family history research, discovered a connection to Kansas. Now, I didn't know a whole lot about Kansas in the Civil War. I had family who lived in um Illinois and Missouri in the 1840s, but by the 1850s, my family had left. But the people there were engaged in some really, really messy border disputes. When you think about the conflicts over slavery that led up to the Civil War, I think a lot of times we just think it just sprung up in the 1860s. But the Kansas border disputes started in 1854, and they lasted almost a full decade. Then the Civil War erupts, and there's several more years of fighting and a lot of need for soldiers. And in Kansas is where we find the Kansas First, which my guest today is going to tell you all about his discovery of the Kansas First and their service to our country. And after you listen to my conversation with him, you might want to go grab a copy of his book. It is called Contraband Hearts, and it's a love story. It's set against this backdrop in Kansas. Enjoy my conversation with Calvin Osborne. Well, Calvin, thank you so much for being here. I'm excited to have this conversation. Um, I understand you live in Maryland now. Have you lived there long?

Calvin Osborne: 3:32

I have lived here uh since about 2003. So quite a quite a bit of time. I've lived in the DC area since 1992, so a little more than 30 years. I moved here from uh Kansas City. Uh and uh but I'm originally from Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Crista Cowan: 3:49

Okay, so you've been around a little bit.

Calvin Osborne: 3:52

I have, yep, yep. I've lived in Phoenix, Arizona and Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Kansas City, and and uh and now on the East Coast, and so I've I've seen the gamut, I guess. Yeah, what took you out to the East Coast? My job, a job opportunity brought me to the East Coast. I was practicing law uh in Kansas City at the time, and uh something that I was uh doing, I guess I did it quite well, but the people in Washington took note and called me up and asked me if I'd like to come to DC. Uh having not been to not ever been to DC at the time, I thought, well, hey, you know, uh I'm in my early 30s, I'd I'd give that a shot. So I came and liked it and stayed.

Crista Cowan: 4:28

Well, there you go. But do you still have family in the Midwest?

Calvin Osborne: 4:32

I do. I have family uh mostly in Tulsa, Oklahoma, uh, where I'm from originally. My family moved to from Tulsa to Phoenix uh when I was in high school. Uh but we only stayed out there, or my family there for about six or seven years, and they moved back to Tulsa. And so uh my parents uh were uh basically in Tulsa when they sort of got to their golden years. And so I spent a lot of time going back and forth to Tulsa. They're both now uh passed on, but I still have a sister and a brother in Tulsa now.

Crista Cowan: 5:01

Tell me a little bit about what it was like growing up with them and and with your parents and in Tulsa. Like were you surrounded by family and family stories and and what that looked like for you?

Calvin Osborne: 5:12

Oh wow. Um it was um uh we didn't have uh any money. Um things were always tight as far back as I can recall. Uh, but our childhood and our upbringing was magical nonetheless. Uh we we didn't spend time on computers or you know, uh uh looking at websites. We spent time walking in a creek, you know, in the afternoons, walking with our uh with our shoes off and our bare feet in the uh in the in the uh shallow creeks, looking for tadpoles, uh and what we call crawds. I guess they call them crawfish these days, or people in in the south, southern part of the country. We call them crawdads, but we would look for those and hope not to get pinched on our toes and that kind of thing. And so we would spend uh most of our days uh just kind of uh in uh uh exploring uh uh abandoned areas, uh creeks, things of that nature, learning how to build tree houses, just basically living outdoors as much as we possibly could. Now kids are so uh are so busy inside. I mean, we we spent all of our time out so outside. So that's what made it magical. And plus I had four brothers, you know, and two sisters. And so we played every sport in the in the yard, and we had a nice big yard on the side of our house, and so it was it was our football field, our softball dime, you know, uh our soccer pitch, everything, you know. So my sisters were just as as busy and athletic as the as the boy as my brothers, and so it was it made for a uh uh a nice big uh brainy bunch type upbringing. And that does sound magical. Yeah, and and every Sunday or so, or at least a couple of times a month, uh our cousins would come over in large numbers, you know, it'd be seven or eight of them, come over. We'd turn the the small football game from five or six people into like ten people. And so it really made it uh made it a lot of fun and reunions every summer to talk about, you know, who passed on and who's got a new child and what uh what the family looks like now, that sort of thing. It was magical.

Crista Cowan: 7:14

Wow, that's amazing. Tell tell me a little bit about your parents. Were they from Oklahoma or were they from elsewhere?

Calvin Osborne: 7:20

Both of my parents were from Oklahoma and from the uh the same area of uh of Oklahoma, um from uh Tulsa County. It was a little town back then called Alsuma. Uh my mother was born in a little town called uh Broken Arrow, which is which uh back then used to be uh in my mind a long ride, long Sunday ride after Broken Arrow is like 12 miles from downtown Tulsa. But uh when I was a kid, it was a long ride, and this Broken Arrow was not really a part of Tulsa, it was like a real small town you got away to. Now it's just a Tulsa suburb, you know, people out there in 15 minutes on their on the expressway. But uh my dad is uh is from uh from that area of the uh of Oklahoma, northeastern Oklahoma, and so is my mother. Um uh their parents, um, my mother's parents came up to northeastern Oklahoma from southern Oklahoma, uh, and um where her father was from, and his father and their parents. So they uh they were um what you call the Choctaw Freedmen. So they are they were descendants of slaves to the Choctaws. And uh Southern Oklahoma is is really Choctaw territory. Uh in fact, there's a county called Choctaw County, and a few little tiny towns that are in that county, is where I've always heard that my family on my mother's side uh came from. A little town called Iderbell, I-D-A-B-E-L. And then my uh but my father is uh his family was was from the uh uh the Broken Arrow uh area, which is basically where uh, as I mentioned, where Broken Arrow is today in Wagner County, just to the east of Tulsa. And so when my mother's family moved to the northeast, uh probably looking for for work, um, that's how it is that they they ended up meeting.

Crista Cowan: 9:01

So that's delightful. You know, I know exactly where Broken Arrow is. My mama's family is all from the northwest corner of Arkansas. Oh, and some of her aunts and uncles ended up in Broken Arrow and lived there their whole lives.

Calvin Osborne: 9:16

Oh, great.

Crista Cowan: 9:17

Well um, as you think about like, you know, your hobbies now and what you what you do now outside of work, um, what are some of the things that you you do uh now?

Calvin Osborne: 9:30

Well, I'm I'm very community oriented. Um I um I'm I'm um very active in my church. I go to a church called Fort Washington Baptist Church in Fort Washington, Maryland. Uh Pastor Darren Poulard uh is uh is our leader there. Um so I spend time uh working with people in the church. Um I spend time focusing on on uh the the history committee, uh making sure that uh people study uh and understand and appreciate uh history uh in general, uh uh and most particularly African American history here. Uh but the most um the most interesting, I think, probably the most um important uh um hobby that I have uh participated in is has been Civil War reenacting. That is my my vocation is uh is I'm an attorney, but my vocation is um is Civil War reenacting. And so um I've been involved in that for quite some time.

Crista Cowan: 10:29

What got you interested in that?

Calvin Osborne: 10:32

Well, I saw uh I've always had sort of an affinity for uh for the Civil War era. And it's just always been an enigma to me that a country could fight itself uh to that level, you know. And as I the more I learned about it, the more I thought I need to learn even more about it. How did this, you know, how did this unfold? How did this come about? And um uh and uh and so um um I saw a movie once uh back uh back in 19 uh 89. Uh funny, I was um, I remember um uh I remember getting prepared to go uh and see a movie, and I'd asked the person who I was gonna go to the movie with that night if she wanted to go see the the uh the Morgan Freeman film. All right. And she said, Oh yeah, it's a great idea. I I think that's gonna be a good movie. I'm uh I'm excited about it seeing tonight, right? So back then you had to go buy your tickets in advance. You couldn't do that whole internet thing we do now. So I I wouldn't got tickets uh to the Morgan Freeman film, which was glory, right? We get to the theater and then uh we go down the hallway to go to the Morgan Freeman Freeman film, and I turn left and she turns right. I'm like, wait a minute, where are you going? She's like, wait a minute, where are you going? So I'm like, Morgan Freeman's film, it's down here. She said, No, it's down here. I'm like, okay, I bought the tickets and I have them. I'm telling you there that it's down here. Turns out he was starring that night in two films that were both premiering. Uh, my movie was Glory, of course. Hers was Driving Miss Daisy. She thought we were gonna go see Driving Miss Daisy, and I'm thinking we're gonna see Glory of a military film. Yeah, we saw Glory, and I was absolutely blown away by the film. And uh, I did not know until that film that there were Af African Americans, that there were black men fighting in the Civil War to eradicate slavery. And I just uh I'd read a lot of textbooks about the Civil War, I'd read lots of articles about the Civil War, read, you know, lots of uh a number of books about the Civil War, but none of them talked about black men actually fighting uh to help eradicate slavery. That film, you know, had me shook. I'm thinking, well, is this really true or not? And the more I looked into it, the more I realized it was in fact true. And so that set me on a um on a um, I guess on a track to try to figure out and find out and explore uh the true involvement of of black men in the Civil War. You know, as a young African-American man and myself, I thought it was basically my duty to understand how uh how uh uh you know my foreparents participated in the Civil War. You know, so um being in Kansas City, there wasn't a lot there, at least in my mind at that time, that I could learn about it. Okay. Uh and so I did what I could, but a couple of years after that, uh, as I mentioned, I I was sent to DC. And I thought, oh, great, DC. There is a lot of Civil War stuff around DC and Virginia. I thought I every every single time I get an opportunity, I'm going out to study one of these battles. I'm gonna go to these battlefields that are around uh the DC area and all the way across Virginia on weekends. And that's what I started doing. And I learned so much about the Civil War that I just got more and more inculped in in the in the conflict and how it uh transpired.

Crista Cowan: 13:44

That is an incredible origin story into a hobby that has become an avocation. That's amazing. Um, I I know a few people who that movie altered their perception of a lot of things. And um, as you you know, as you have studied this, at what point did you start to think about how your personal family might connect to the things that you were discovering about Civil War history?

Calvin Osborne: 14:11

Well, um, it took a while. Um, I started studying this uh when I came to DC in 90 in 92 and joined the organization shortly afterwards. Uh, I joined the Civil War reenacting group here. Uh, and that's that was the group that actually made the movie Glory. Uh, they they were behind Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman. And so when I met them, I thought, hey, you guys are the reason I'm I'm here. So I was able to actually join the Civil War reenactors who made that movie that I saw a couple of years before. Um, and so uh I just I started started studying, you know, uh making sure that I didn't miss any meetings. And at every meeting, I would learn more and more about the Civil War and and the involvement of uh what they call United States Colored Troops, right? And uh and or black men in the Civil War. And so we would have speakers come in, we would go to other places and speak, colleges, high schools, that kind of thing. And it took me a while to kind of get my feet under me to begin to be able to to to speak about it as an as an with some authority about uh about the actual events and what happened and turn myself into a historian. I was already a lawyer, but I was now becoming a historian. So um, but um it and one of the things we did, Krista, we uh to to to we we really cared about being period correct. We really cared about making sure that if we're gonna talk about the Civil War, if we're gonna give people an impression about it, we want to make sure that it's absolutely accurate. My uh my colleagues, my Civil War buddies tell me that uh in the middle of the making of the movie, they had a discussion with Denzel Washington and they and uh and he said something. I don't know if it's true or not, but this is a story they said that uh Denzel told them that hey, you you all you all want to know you want to know the difference between actors and reenactors? And they said, What's the difference? What's the difference? We we're all acting like soldiers, we got uniforms on. He said, We get paid and you guys don't. So so uh, but um what happened was I just really I just really threw myself and immersed myself into Civil War reenacting, and and and that meant that I had to learn how to talk like Civil War soldiers, learn to live, study uh the things that they that they uh were challenged by. Um and at some point I had to get up on the stage and and sort of bring some of those soldiers to life and and sort of do a soliloquy, you know, in first person of a soldier to let people see what a soldier's like, what they think about, what they talk about, you know, how they feel, and that sort of thing. I got kind of used to that. And uh and a lot of years went by, Krista. And then uh and then one day, um, well, CNN uh uh called me up after a conversation that I had, an electronic conversation I had, and they wanted to they wanted to talk to me about um about my father's involvement in World War II, right? Uh but after talking about that, you know, um they said, you know, you seem like an interesting fellow. Do you mind if we study your background? And I told them I was a civil war reenactor, and they they heard the same story I'm telling you about how I got involved. And they said, Well, why do you do that? I'm like, Well, I don't know. I just I just know that I can't stop, you know. It feels like a calling now, you know. And um and I feel like if we don't do it, it's a very small group of guys in DC, uh, if we don't do it, no one will, you know. And uh and and and uh the truth about black men in the Civil War will probably die out uh because there wasn't much out there to begin with, you know. But um uh but um uh one thing led to another, and CNN came back about a month later and said, you know, we found some interesting things about your background. Do you mind if we talk to you about it? And they're the ones who told me that my great-great-grandfather was actually in a group called the first Kansas Colored Troops, and they were the very first black men to actually fight in the Civil War. So you know that floored me, you know. So that's that's how I learned about it, and that's how that's you know, uh that was just um just a jarring moment for me.

Crista Cowan: 17:56

Your calling maybe was coming directly from the ancestors, yeah.

Calvin Osborne: 18:00

Seems like it. You know, I've heard that if you reach out for your ancestors, they'll reach back, you know. And I I used to think that was just a saying, you know, in in in in our community, but I think it's something to it now.

Crista Cowan: 18:10

You know, yeah, I absolutely think there's something to that. When CNN came to you to present that information to you, um, that was actually a research project that had been done by our story producers here at Ancestry. And what was that experience like learning that information?

Calvin Osborne: 18:28

The CNN of you was was life-altering for me. We, my wife and I were planning to go to Alabama um that summer, and we were planning to have our little one-week vacation. And when CNN called up and said, hey, we want to come do this right in the middle of COVID. We want to do um the uh come to your home and do a video shoot. I thought, okay, that's great. And we and they said, Well, we want to come on this date. And I talked to my wife and said, Hey, can we push our can we push our our drive to Alabama uh back uh a day or two so I could do this this video? She was kind enough to agree. And so when um when the production crew came and set up on my back on my deck back there, I thought, well, this is kind of interesting and cool. My neighbors were peeking out the window and everything. And so in the middle of COVID, so we had masks on until we got out on the out on the out on the porch and everything. I think it must have been like 2021, is my guess. I forgot exactly what year it was, but um um they came in and they said, uh, we found some interesting stuff. We'd like to talk to you about it on camera. And I thought it was great. And they started to reveal to me that my, you know, they asked me what I knew about my ancestors. I really didn't know anything. I knew that my father was in World War II, but that's all I knew. But CNN came in and basically said, along with ancestors, they said, we could even go farther back with your lineage in terms of these terms of the battles. Then they told me that they turned a page or something like that. That's what about this name? They said, Read his name, William Lace. I said, I don't know who that is. They said, Well, that's your great-great-grandfather. He was and he was a soldier with the first Kansas. I was floored, Krishna. I for a couple of seconds I couldn't speak. I thought, wait a minute, 29 years, something like that, of studying black soldiers, 29 years of trying to give voice to uh to people just because I felt like they deserved a voice. 29 years of of figuring out what they felt, trying to figure out what they felt, um, uh what they thought about the people who love them, what they thought about what the people who love them thought about them and their their interest in getting involved in a what where they may never come home. You know, 29 years of of paying attention to what they wear, how it felt, going out in the hot sun, laying in the grass, sleeping in tents, trying to get a feel for what they went through, right? Uh, and now I find out that um that that what I've been what I've been searching for all along is this connection to my own family, you know. And when they said that this was your this is when Nico said this is your great-great-grandfather, it all made sense. It was like a puzzle that just clicked and everything else turned, you know, the right colors, the right everything. I'm thinking, wow, now it all makes sense why I couldn't quit. I quit my group two or three times and maybe lasted a couple of days. So I said, I'm just too busy, guys. I I'm my daughter's born. I I got this, I got that. I can I just I can't come out every weekend, every other weekend. A couple of days go by, I'm like, oh, okay, this is really important. It's only 50 of us in the country who do this, you know. And if when we're not getting any younger, you know, and if I quit, you know, and at the time I was one of the younger people, and if I quit, you know, that's this is a story that probably doesn't get told, you know, and then when um when they revealed that to me, I thought this is all this all makes sense now. And now all of a sudden I felt this huge, you know, sense of pride swell up in me and and well up and just thought, hey, you know, uh, I I just got connected to my my past and my ancestors, and you know, and and uh and and I'm something now that now that I know who these people are. My you know my shoes got a little heavier, you know, because I like I felt like I'm much more solid now now that I know what what this is all about. And I'm gonna get, I'm gonna sink myself into what this guy, William Lacey, is all about and figure it, figure it all about.

Crista Cowan: 22:01

So for those who are listening who aren't familiar with the U.S. colored troops, can you just give us a brief explanation of how that all came about?

Calvin Osborne: 22:12

Sure, sure. Um black men in this country have always um volunteered to fight to help uh preserve freedom in this country, even when that freedom was elusive for them. Uh there were 5,000 black men who fought in the Revolutionary War, but no one talks about them. The only people that uh the only uh the only people of color that um that the history books remember is Christmas Attox. And that's because he was the first person killed in the C in the Revolutionary War, and up in Boston, remember? So but uh but the Civil War, uh the Civil War, uh when it was upon the country, um most most black men, a lot of black men, offered themselves up to be to fight on the side of the Union and uh to um to help eradicate uh this horrible scourge of of uh chattel slavery. But they were rebuffed for the first couple of years of the war. Um and the rebels, the Confederacy, continued to win most, if not all the battles, the first couple of years of the Civil War, all the while black men from different organizations and different cities across the uh the country continued to you know to knock on the doors and say, hey, let us fight. We have a lot to gain here, a lot to lose too, you know. But after a while, the the North just began to realize we're not we don't have any more men. And so what you had was the first Kansas Colored Troops who were organized in 1862, actually, and fought out, fought out there. Then you had the uh the Louisiana Native Guard, which was a very interesting group of of um of black soldiers in the Civil War because most of them spoke French and and English, you know, being from the Louisiana area. And then you had the uh the Massachusetts 54, which is a group that I represent typically when I go out and do reenactments. But uh, but what happened was you had you know one or two, you know, United States colored troop groups uh begin to participate in the Civil War. I think the the the prevailing you know uh wisdom at that time became hey, these guys really will fight and they really will train and they really will uh obey orders. And all of a sudden, this the North had 200,000 brand new soldiers that they didn't have before. And according to President Lincoln, that turned the tide of the Civil War. So uh, and most of the battles that the black that black men fought in were smaller battles, but he said it turned the tide because it gave them 200,000 new soldiers that uh that the South couldn't couldn't uh couldn't keep up with.

Crista Cowan: 24:29

Yeah, it's interesting because when you think about Kansas, Kansas makes sense, right? Because it's a border state. But you mentioned South Carolina, you mentioned Louisiana, those are deep South states. How are black men in those states where slavery is almost the rule of law, even during the Civil War, even you know, like in the midst of all of that, how are they raising troops and getting away with that?

Calvin Osborne: 24:51

Well, um, you have to remember too that uh that uh when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in uh in uh September uh 18 uh 1862, uh one of the things that he put in the in emancipation uh was uh was a clause that basically said uh that uh if if you uh if you could get if you were in the south, if you were in one of the states that were in rebellion, basically the Confederacy, if you were living in the Confederacy and you were a slave, if you could get to the Union Army, when the Union Army comes through through your county, uh the Union Army would protect you. And that became not only uh a way to get out of slavery. I mean, Canada's pretty far, okay. Yeah, if you live in Georgia, but if you if all you gotta do is go next door to the county, to the next county, and there's a federal army there uh that'll protect you from you know from your enslavers, people people thought, hey, I think I think people thought, hey, that's a better option. In addition to that, they had an opportunity, some of them, to become actual soldiers and join those ranks, you know, which also meant, you know, uh food, you know, rations, sometimes, uh, sometimes a uniform if they had some available. And uh, and some of them became uh became soldiers just by leaving the county or uh or waiting for the federal army to come near, um, and uh knowing that they'd have some protection, they'd be out of this this horrible scourge of uh of of slavery.

Crista Cowan: 26:13

So I'm not overly familiar with this particular part of history, and so please correct me if I'm wrong. But as those black people came into those federal military camps, um was the word contraband, is that associated with contraband camps? Is am I remembering that correctly?

Calvin Osborne: 26:32

You you you are absolutely right. Um, they call it sometimes they would flow into the into the military camps in numbers like two, three hundred, you know. And if you're if you're the the person who's in charge of that regiment, you can't all of a sudden feed 300 people. You can hardly feed yourself, your own soldiers, right? And so oftentimes those two or three hundred people, because they left their their plantation, they had they had to walk behind the the regiments because they didn't have any place else to go. They didn't know which direction to go in a lot of cases, and to the extent that they could help the army, that was always a good thing. So, yes, you would have contraband camps. And so then do the U.S.

Crista Cowan: 27:07

colored troops then come out of those contraband camps mostly. I mean, they're congregated groups of individuals watching the Federal Army fight.

Calvin Osborne: 27:16

Right. He right. Uh General Butler is the first person to begin to call them contraband, you know. And and yes, a lot of the United States colored troops did come out of the contraband camp. Not all of them, but a lot of them did, you know. Um uh my uh my uh great-great-grandfather, William Lacey, uh, came out of one of those contraband camps. He he was an escape slave from the Indian territory, which is now Oklahoma. Uh the now that's the broken arrow area. But uh, but he and his uh his teenage uh uh girlfriend, I'll call him at that point, escaped from Oklahoma up into Kansas. And uh when they got to Kansas, the first Kansas Colored Troop was bivouacked or right there resting in Fort Scott, Kansas, just outside the wall. They were training and waiting for their orders to the to go to the front to battle. And they were there for for a matter of weeks and weeks and weeks, training and getting getting stronger and and and recruiting. And so my great-great-grandfather presented himself to the to them trying to be a soldier, but they say you're too young. So they spent their time in a contraband camp trying to help you know find a way to make a living.

Crista Cowan: 28:16

Tell us a little bit about the Kansas first and how it came about, and then how your ancestor got involved.

Calvin Osborne: 28:22

Well, uh, the first Kansas was um was organized by a senator from Kansas by the name of James Lane, L A-N-E. Uh, he had uh created some political relationships with soldiers who he trusted and he knew were were real true abolitionists like himself, one by the name of James Williams, right? And he tapped James Williams to become the leader of the first Kansas Colored Troops. And they did this back in the in the uh in the uh the summer of 1862, even before they told President Lincoln that they were gonna raise black troops, they decided, Senator Lane, that I know what I'm gonna do, and I'm I may tell the president about this, or I may I may not. And so in 1862, they were they they they they raised um they raised about 600 or 600 or 700 black men, uh, and they call them the first Kansas Colored Troops. So about half of them came from northern northeastern Kansas, around Leavenworth and uh in Topeka. Uh, and then and then, well, I should say they signed up there, and then about half of them came from southeast Kansas, uh, like my great-great-grandfather, and that was around uh around towns like um like Fort Scott and Mound City. Most of these black men came over as escape slaves from Missouri into Kansas because the word got around that you could join the first Kansas Colored Troops and fight in the Civil War and get paid, maybe, right? And then a lot of people came up from the Indian Territory to join the Civil War effort as well. And so that's how the uh the first Kansas Colored Troop was was formed. The Battle of Island Mound, that's the very first battle that black soldiers fought in in the Civil War. Um, it was it also had Native Americans, Indians from the Indian Territory, uh involved. So you Had a really diverse, ethnically, ethnically diverse Civil War uh crew in the first cancer. You had white leaders because that's the way it had to be. And they they acquitted themselves very nicely. But a few months later, um, after the turn of the um the year uh and the Emancipation Proclamation getting issued and everything, all of a sudden Lincoln said, Well, it really is a good idea to get, you know, to get black men in the Civil War. Uh, but let's go ahead and organize them in a way that makes them federal, federalized, right? Um, so the first Kansas, you know, the troops were raised by the state of Kansas. The uh the first Kansas Colored Troop became the 79th U.S. United States Colored Troops. They became federalized, right? They fought, uh, I don't know, seven or eight battles all up all across what they call the Trans-Mississippi River area.

Crista Cowan: 30:46

Wow. That's amazing. It's so interesting because I think sometimes we simplify, oversimplify the Civil War and the ideology behind the Union and the Confederacy. And you think, you know, everyone on the Union side was for the, you know, freeing of the slaves and and you know, keeping the country together and all the things that that sometimes gets oversimplified too. And then you have complicated situations like this where, you know, federal law is still prohibiting black men from serving in particular roles.

Calvin Osborne: 31:17

I would have to believe that, and I've read account for me, I think people's motivation for going to the Civil War varied just like it would today. I mean, if you look at our army, I'll guarantee if you interview a hundred people in today's army, some people will say, Well, I did this because my dad did it. I did it because my granddad and my great-grand, we all went to the military, and we think this is a tradition. Our family loves it, you know. Other people might say, Well, hey, I really didn't know what to do out of high school, so it was a good idea, you know. Some people will say, Well, yeah, I want to fight for freedom for America, and I want to, you know, and I want to, you know, make sure that people across the world don't take advantage of it. It'll be all sorts of sorts of motivation, I'm sure, just like it was back then.

Crista Cowan: 31:53

Well, tell us about, tell us a little bit more about William Lacey. How like he was initially rejected from any kind of participation because he was too young. And then at what point was he allowed to to participate?

Calvin Osborne: 32:04

Well, uh, I don't think he was um I don't think he was thinking of this, but um, by the time he turned uh 17, maybe a couple years later, uh, I mean, it spent a couple of years trying to eke out a living, you know, had a tiny little farm on the back of their shack, you know, and working odd jobs to try to buy things that he couldn't grow, you know. Uh a couple of years went by and it was just a difficult time. But what happened was a man named uh Sterling Price um uh was coming across Missouri. He had been a Missouri governor, but when the uh but when the uh Civil War broke out, he decided he wanted to wanted to be on the side of the Confederacy, right? And uh and so uh he decided to go down to Arkansas and join the Confederacy. And of course, the the Confederacy commissioned him to go back and fight in Missouri, you know, to carry the Confederate flag, the battle flag, across Missouri. So he started a campaign from southeast Missouri, which is just north of Memphis, okay? And he came all the way across the state of Missouri, you know, killing and burning everything that he possibly could. So, but the word got to Kansas as he turned west from St. Louis and headed toward Kansas City and Westport. The word got uh got got uh to that area before he could. And um, so what happened is the state of Kansas decided to raise a militia, you know, kind of like a National Guard now, a temporary militia. So they raised a militia. The the governor of Kansas sent out a uh an order, uh, basically ordering every uh every able-bodied uh man who was you know 16 and above to go to your county and join the county, join the uh Kansas, uh a Kansas militia. And that and they and they did not differentiate between your black and white, you know, uh although the law did. The law, the law at the time, and even in Kansas said, you know, black men don't go to the military. But William Lacey and the rest of a lot of the black men did show up and say, you know, I think they meant all of us. You know, some of the newspapers said, hey, this this is not a time to be separating based on race because uh because uh ster uh uh Sterling Price is gonna kill everybody, black and white. He is not gonna differentiate whether you are, you know, whether you are uh white or black in this county, they're gonna kill everybody because they because they wanted to kill abolitionists, right? You heard about the whole Missouri and Kansas border wars, you know. That's what it was all about back then. Um the border wars. They even have a football game this weekend, tomorrow, in fact, where Kansas played Missouri. You know the nickname of their of their game.

Crista Cowan: 34:26

They still call it the Border War?

Calvin Osborne: 34:28

The Border Wars. Okay, it's called the Border Wars. We'll watch it tomorrow. What I watched. Most people won't realize what that's about. Um, back to your question about how he got involved. He was he he he he he took the call. He accepted the call from the from the governor to show up at the county. Uh, and then what what happened was they did some training for like three or four weeks because they knew that Pat Price was coming across there at some point. And when they got to work, they had to take off from Southeast Kansas and go up to Kansas, what we now call Kansas City. It was Kansas City then, but it wasn't the big trading post. There's a there's a town there at the time it was called Westport. Now it's just a little village in Kansas City. Inside of Kansas City, it's been in Gulf. But Westport was a big trading uh post back then. It was the westernmost trading post for people for settlers going out to the west. Once you left Kansas City, there wouldn't be anything until you get to California. So you had to stock up in Westport on on items. And so that made Westport very valuable. Well, Pap Price, it was his nickname, Pap, Sterling Bright, he wanted to burn down Westport. And so William Lacey, along with 12,000 other uh men from Kansas, uh hustled up to Kansas City and fought him and turned him back south and beat him at the what they call the Battle of Westport. William Lacey was only 17 years old when he when he fought in that battle. And it was a very interesting battle uh from a standpoint of uh of who participated. Um you had uh on William Lacey's side, they were these all these guys were 17, 18, was a man named uh William Hitchcock. Okay, and we called him Wild Bill Hickcock. He became famous you know 20 years later for being a sort of an outdoorsman and a card shark out in the West. Uh also a guy named William Cody, uh better known as Buffalo Bill. He was he was in that battle. He was a spy on William Lacey's side, on the side of the Union there. On the other side were a couple other guys who were already famous because they were famous killers. Frank and Jesse James were on that other side. So the Battle of Westport included all of these guys, you know, and my little simple, simple, you know, escapes laid grandfather, great-great-grandfather William Lacey, who was 17. I think the rest of them were about the same age, and most of them hadn't really made their names except for Frank and Jesse James, because they were murderers already, you know, uh, and they were a couple years older than William Lacey. But that's how he got involved in the battle. And then after the battle, after they won the battle, um, he realized that, hey, you know, I can actually do this this military stuff, you know. So, um, and I don't have a job back home, and there's not a whole lot of food, you know, around here because I've been gone for, you know, for for several weeks, you know, um, I'm just gonna join the military, the actual military, the regular army, the first Kansas. By then they were already down in Arkansas, but they could still get reinforcements from time to time. You could go to the local post office or wherever and sign up for the first Kansas. You would get your check, you know, give it to your wife and take off. Go join a battle. And that's what he did. So that's that's how he got involved in the in the war. It's a long answer to your your question, but that's that's what happened.

Crista Cowan: 37:29

That's amazing. So you, you know, you started your interest in Civil War history in 1989 with the movie Glory. You've spent all this time and energy and attention learning about this history, learning firsthand accounts. Um, and like about how far into that when you learned you had this connection through this great great-grandfather.

Calvin Osborne: 37:52

Wow. It was a it was a while. I mean, just 32 years I've been in I've been involved in civil or reenactment, but I've only known about my ancestor for like the last three years.

Crista Cowan: 38:01

So did you think about like all of this time and all of this investment and history that you've invested in Civil War reenactment, Civil War representation, Civil War study, I suspect. Learning that you had a great great-grandparent who was part of part of that, how did that change your perspective?

Calvin Osborne: 38:24

Chris, it just it just added validity to what I was what I've been going around the country saying about Civil War soldiers. You know, I'd been talking about um the Civil War and what happened, you know, from a standpoint of you know, someone who studied it sort of as a third person, but now, you know, once I learned that and began to study him and see what he did and went through and how he lived his life, that sort of thing. If it feels like to me that it adds validity to my story when I get on the stage and talk now, because now I'm I'm not just talking about somebody who fought in the war. I'm talking about my great-great-grandfather. I have a direct connection to the people who who helped to fight, make this country what it is today. And so it added a little, you know, made my shoes a little heavier, made me feel like I'm, you know, like I know where I'm standing now. I got every right to stand and and be and say what I want to say about the Civil War because I can prove it, you know. And um, and um and it just validated, I think, some of the some of the research that I've done over the years.

Crista Cowan: 39:22

Yeah, that's amazing. And so you've chosen to write about some things. Tell us about that experience.

Calvin Osborne: 39:28

Yep, yep. I I've spent the uh three years researching this guy once I got a name. I mean, that's all they gave me was a name. Uh, and they said that he was in the first Kansas Colored Troop. That was enough because I'd spent 29 years studying soldiers. I thought, oh, I'm good. I'm good to go. I it just so I have been prepared to find this man, find his life, put put some some meat on his bones and tell the world who he was. You know, I tried to figure out if there's anything unique about him that people would be interested in in terms of reading about him. So what I did was I just started gathering research. I'd I'd go out to the little town where I heard he was from, I'd look around at the place and get a feel for what it might have looked like, you know, in 1863. I talked to people at the Historical Society, I go to the county records, you know, the office and look for property records and things like that. And of course, I'm gonna be curious about the last name, Lacey, because it's not exactly an African name, I didn't think. I figured it must have been some sort of an English or Irish name, and I was right. And so I was that helped me a little bit in terms of finding out more about his enslavers, you know. But um, but but that's what uh that's what I did. And I looked up one day after three years and I said, I gotta do something with all this research, Krista. I have two daughters, but they don't seem to be all that interested in this. And one of these days I'll be gone. And I don't think it's any doesn't mean anybody any good for me to have all this research in my in my metaphyll. So I thought I got to figure out a way to to to put this in some sort of uh some sort of a book that would make sense. And what I've discovered after I was thinking about that was I just discovered, hey, I think I'll tell his life, tell the story of his life through a love story because he met his he met his wife at the age of 14, fell in love because they were trading with the creeks. His his enslaver and her enslaver were traders, and they were trading with trading with uh each other, and that's how they met. Uh, and then and then uh a little relationship blossomed, and before you knew it, they started talking about not wanting to be enslaved and how what we could do about it. And with the Civil War coming, they thought, hey, this is our opportunity, and so they escon escaped together to Kansas, you know, and um and and never looked back, and you know, they stayed together until they died. He was like 68, and she was like, you know, 60 or 70 something. And so uh and they had seven children in Kansas, all of them went right there in Mound City, Kansas. And so I thought, well, what what a wonderful love story. So I decided to write their life um uh from the try in terms of a uh love story. And so I put the book together called Contraband Hearts, and I gave it that title because that's what they were contraband. And I don't think anybody really cared about the hearts of contraband for real, you know. But I don't think people recognize on another other angle, they don't know they didn't really recognize how strong the hearts of contraband, people who are contraband could be.

Crista Cowan: 42:12

I mean, it's a be it sounds like a beautiful love story, but also beautiful that you've chosen to memorialize their life and your efforts researching about them in that way. So as you think about Kansas, like it it was a place of refuge for William and his at the time girlfriend as they escaped there. It became a place that represented freedom for them, not just in the way that they got to live their lives, but also, you know, the fact that they fought for that freedom. As you think about Kansas, what is what does that place mean to you?

Calvin Osborne: 42:46

I went to a college in uh just across the border in Missouri in a little town called Liberty, Missouri, which is just north of Kansas City. I had no idea when I went to college that uh in fact I was living in Phoenix when the time came for me to decide where I was gonna go to college. And I look at a bunch of different schools across the country, but I ended up in a tiny college called William Jewel in Liberty, Missouri, right? And uh for a lot of different reasons. And uh when I finished there, I went to law school in Kansas City. So I spent a lot of time around the border right there in Kansas City, and just and we would frequently go over into Kansas. And it's funny how people in Missouri kind of thought, well, Kansas is kind of second rate, you know. It was always sort of like, eh, you don't want to go to Kansas, not much over there. The the biggest part of this of Kansas City is in Missouri, it's what a football team is, that's what a basketball, all the nightclubs and the money is. But, you know, and and I was part of that thought too. But when I realized how uh pivotal, what a pivotal role the state of Kansas played in the eradication of slavery, my perspective about Kansas changed, you know, uh, and the people there, uh, and then and the people who live there now have to be sort of the offspring of folks who were the abolitionists back then. And these are the people who, you know, those people back during the Civil War are people who provided an opportunity for William Lacey and his uh runaway girlfriend Lucinda, okay, um, to explore that personhood. You know, if you're someone who's enslaved and someone else is taking everything that you ever earn, everything that you ever uh ever uh do, and including your hopes and dreams, right? Uh the state of Kansas, which was just next door, uh just on top of Oklahoma, there, uh offered a completely different uh life. And if you're 15 and 14 or something like that and you run away uh not really knowing where you're going, you must have a lot of confidence, you know, uh in that state. They must have heard a lot about the people and the abolitionists who were living in Kansas. I mean, we're talking about people who like John Brown and you know and uh and James Montgomery, you're famous, you know, people who lived in that same area. Um when you think about uh when I think about William and Lucinda wanting to abscond to a way to a land where where they could become you know whole people, full of people, Kansas is you know has a you know is that place, first of all, and that's why it'll always have a warm spot in my heart to know that you know that the people of Kansas welcome them with open arms. It changed for me the way I saw um the state of Kansas. And one of my friends read my book and called me up and he said the same thing. He said, you know, I didn't know that about Kansas and about how what a what a um abolitionist state it it was. I knew they were kind of they're called the free state, but I didn't really know why, you know. And now and now I do, thanks to your book. And so Kansas is just it's just way more special now to me. Uh I and I've told somebody this before. I I feel so much richer to know that I'm connected to people who were who were so tough, who who cared so much about the their country and about their fellow man, you know. Um, and and and it it is a it is a matter of love, you know, and that's why it's a love story. It's a it's love on they were both uh very religious people, uh, because I know that because of my research, and I can read their obituaries and tell how religious they were and what people said about them. And so that you know, they they loved each other from from a personal standpoint of man and woman. Uh you have to if you're going to be together for for 60 years, you know, and you know, uh and they loved uh their fellow man, you know, um that's a different kind of love, so much so that they risked their lives to try to help uh uh eradicate slavery, you know, and uh and they loved uh they love God from an agape love standpoint. And so that's why I called it contraband hearts, you know, because it focuses on love, not not just necessarily, you know, in slavery or slavery or anything like that, but love is it's the story how about how they stay together, you know, and uh and the Civil War was just just kind of secondary to a certain extent, you know. But uh, but it is uh it is a wonderful story.

Crista Cowan: 46:43

It sounds like it. And you know, it's I love that you chose the angle of love because there's so many things in the world that uh we use sometimes to dehumanize one another. But love is the thing I think that humanizes us to one another faster than anything.

Calvin Osborne: 47:00

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Crista Cowan: 47:02

Well, I'm excited to read it. Is is it out yet, or is there somewhere we can learn more about it?

Calvin Osborne: 47:07

Yes, you can go to contrabandhearts.com uh and you can order a book there. It has it's already been published. It's it's out now. Uh it's uh was published back in June on my mother's 100th uh what would have been my mother's 100th birthday, you know, and that was uh that was just a calling, some sort of a spiritual thing that happened. I mean, I had so many, you know, sort of spiritual like things that happened in the in the development in the writing of this book that it's not even funny. After a while, I thought, you know, this is this is not coincidental and it's not serendipity. This is the calling now, you know. I've been reaching out for my for my ancestors for a long time, and now they're reaching back because they're they're they're putting stuff that's being placed in my in my in my path that I didn't see all these years that now I see and and make and and and look at it differently.

Crista Cowan: 47:55

Well, it sounds like not just the ancestors reaching out to you, but also maybe the hand of God a little bit.

Calvin Osborne: 48:00

Absolutely. I'm not shy to say that I think so too.

Crista Cowan: 48:03

I love that. Calvin, thank you so much for sharing your story, for sharing William Lacey's story with us. Your daughters might not be interested now, but one of the things that I've learned being a family historian is that um, you know, a lot of times kids and grandkids, we're not sure they're listening, we're not sure they care. But at some point, something happens in their life that, you know, much like Glory triggered your interest in something, something will happen that will trigger their interest. And, you know, hopefully you'll still be around to answer some of those questions. But if you're not, what an amazing gift you've given them by putting this together in this way.

Calvin Osborne: 48:40

Thank you so much. I I I'm I'm really, really proud of it. It's one of the best, it's one of, if not the best thing I've ever done. So I'm really, really, really, really proud of it.

Crista Cowan: 48:49

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