FAYETTEVILLE — The North Carolina Civil War & Reconstruction History Center is sponsoring a presentation on June 19 by Hari Jones, one of the foremost authorities on the role of African-Americans in the Civil War.

Jones’ presentation is titled “How the Civil War Made America Great.” The presentation will be at 7 p.m. in the Rudolph Jones Student Center at Fayetteville State University, located at 1200 Murchison Road.

The lecture, which is free and open to the public, comes on Juneteenth or Freedom Day, an American holiday that commemorates the June 19, 1865, announcement of the abolition of slavery in Texas. It has also come to commemorate more generally the emancipation of enslaved African-Americans throughout the former Confederacy.

The presentation focuses on the perspective that there were no losers — North or South, Union or Confederate — because the war effectively formed a more perfect union and secured the blessing of liberty for millions of Americans who had not known such freedom before.

Jones, a Pauls Valley, Okla., native, is a historian, curator, writer, and motivational speaker. For 12 years, he was the assistant director and curator at the African-American Civil War Freedom Foundation and Museum in Washington, D.C. He currently is an independent history consultant. He serves on the board of directors of the National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg, Pa., where he presented his award-winning lecture series “The Lost Story” in the fall of 2015.

Jones has appeared in more than 50 television programs and documentaries viewed on CSPAN, Fox News, NBC, PBS, BBC, the American Heroes Channel, the History Channel, the Smithsonian Channel and numerous local outlets. He also has worked on exhibits on displays across the country.

Jones served in the U.S. Marine Corps as an infantryman, an artillery officer, and an intelligence officer. He was an instructor at the U. S. Naval Academy. Reaching the rank of staff sergeant as an enlisted Marine, he retired as a captain in 1997 after more 20 years of service.