How the Civil War Changed Washington

Alcione Amos, the Curator, will be our guide at the Anacostia Museum. How the Civil War Changed Washington

This exhibition examines the social and spatial impact of the Civil War on Washington, DC and the resulting dramatic changes in social mores, and in the size and ethnic composition of the city’s population. The population of the city increased tremendously during the war. Between 1860 and 1870, the population of the area that became the city of Washington increased from 75,080 inhabitants to 131,700, and the African American population increased from 1/5th to 1/3rd beginning a trend of growth that continued until a century after the war when they would become the majority. Women workers joined the federal work force; the federal government was reimagined and after the War; and forts built in the hilly terrain around the city became new neighborhoods, expanding the city’s footprint. The exhibition contextualizes these and other changes while telling the fascinating stories of individuals who came to Washington during the Civil War  and who contributed to its shaping.

Alcione M. Amos bio

Alcione M. Amos, currently a Museum Curator at Smithsonian Institution Anacostia Community Museum in Washington, D.C., is originally from Brazil and has lived and worked in the United States for four decades. She received a MSLS from Catholic University in Washington, D.C. Ms. Amos worked as a Researcher and Librarian at the World Bank, Washington, D.C. for more than two decades while at the same time maintaining a career as an Independent Scholar. Her fields of interest include post-slavery societies such as those of the Black Seminoles and African-Americans in Washington, D.C. after the Civil War in the United States, and Afro-Brazilians who moved to West Africa in the 19^th century. She also has studied the Gullah communities of coastal Georgia and South Carolina. Ms. Amos has published in Africa, Brazil, the United States, and Europe. Among other works she has published two books: The Black Seminoles: History of a Freedom Seeking People andOs que voltaram: a história dos retornados afro-brasileiros na África Ocidental no século XIX. She has also curated two exhibits: World Shout Song (2010-11) and How the Civil War Changed Washington (2015) both of them exhibited at the Anacostia Community Museum.  Her exhibit Gullah Bahia África (version in Portuguese of World Shout Song) opens in Brazil in August of 2015.

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