KURE BEACH — Pembroke native Malinda Maynor Lowery will give a talk on Americans Indians’ role in the Civil War on Saturday when Fort Fisher State Historic Site marks the 154th anniversary of the Second Battle of Fort Fisher.

She will speak at 12:30 p.m. in the auditorium of the visitors center. Admission is free.

Fort Fisher was a Confederate fort during the American Civil War that protected the vital trading routes of the port at Wilmington until its capture by the Union in 1865.

Lowery, who is a frequent guest speaker at UNC Pembroke and elsewhere in Robeson County, is an associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a member of the Lumbee Tribe. Her presentation is titled “The War Within a War: Lumbee Indians at Fort Fisher.”

Lowery, director of the Center for the Study of the American South at UNC-Chapel Hill, is the author of “Lumbee Indians: An American Struggle,” published earlier this year by the University of North Carolina Press.

Lumbees, the largest tribe east of the Mississippi River with about 60,000 members, were not allowed to enlist in North Carolina regiments during the Civil War. Along with slaves, many Lumbees were conscripted as unpaid labor in the construction of the massive earthworks at Fort Fisher that guarded the New Inlet channel into the port of Wilmington from Union naval forces.

Workers at the Fort had a high mortality rate, and many Lumbees resisted conscription and the Confederate government, notably the famed outlaw Henry Berry Lowrie.

Harvey Godwin Jr., chairman of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, will introduce Lowery.

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Staff report