Corinth Contraband Camp

Address: 800 N Parkway Street

Hours of Operation: Sunrise to Sunset, Daily

Contrabands, or formerly enslaved people, had been converging on Corinth since the Union occupation of the city began. Many found employment among the army camps as cooks, servants, and laundry workers. They found lodging as best they could and began a tenuous life, neither fully free nor fully enslave.

At first, the numbers of the escaped enslaved people reaching United States Army lines were a trickle. When President Abraham Lincoln issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, that trickle became a flood.

Brigadier General Grenville M. Dodge, the commander of the Corinth garrison, understood the important role of Blacks within the Confederacy and the negative effect their departure would have on the Southern war effort. He welcomed those seeking freedom to Federal lines and designated a camp for them to the east of town. Chaplain James M. Alexander of the 66th Illinois Infantry Regiment was appointed superintendent.

The camp became a model of efficiency and was soon transformed into a small town complete with a church, commissary, hospital, frame and log houses, and a street grid with named streets and numbered houses. Members of the American Missionary Association served as staff, and also taught at the small school which held classes for children during the day and adults at night.

Four hundred acres of farmland were put to the plow; one hundred acres of vegetables and three hundred in cotton. The produce was sold back to the government and all workers were paid wages for their labor. At its height, the camp was home to over 6,000 people.

In addition to overseeing the construction of the camp and its agricultural program, Dodge also trained and armed a company of Black men to provide security for the camp. These efforts would ultimately lead to the formation of the 1st Alabama Infantry of African Descent, later designated the 55th United States Colored Infantry.

The camp came to an end in January 1864. The Union abandoned Corinth which was no longer the strategic hub it had been earlier in the war. The troops were needed in other theaters of war and the camp could not survive without the security provided by the army. Camp residents were sent by train to existing camps near Memphis.