University of Louisiana at Lafayette students presented findings relevant to the history of Iberia Parish Monday afternoon at the Shadows Visitors Center.

The coursework the history students at UL Lafayette have been working on all semester related to African-American veterans of the Civil War who enlisted in Iberia Parish and the findings of some of that work was presented to a live and virtual audience during the presentation.

The event was a joint effort between UL Lafayette’s history department and the Iberia African-American Historical Society, whose president said she was very impressed with the results of the students’ work.

“These students have worked so hard this semester doing this research and helping to compile an archive of the African-American soldiers from Iberia Parish during the Civil War,” Phebe Hayes, PH.D, said.

Ian Beamish, PH.D., said the idea for the course came from the IAAHS and had been in the works for almost two years.

“We’ve been working a while to put this together with Dr. Hayes and members of the IAAHS board,” he said.

Fourteen students worked on the project, with the IAAHS providing the names of more than 60 known African-American veterans of the Civil War from Iberia Parish, and worked to find out as much information as possible on those veterans.

The students were separated into three groups that worked on the veterans’ lives before and after enlistment, during military service, and the communities formed following the war.

Laura Hughes, a student in the course, gave an overview of veterans like Mitchell Clay who served in the 1st Louisiana Cavalry.

Beamish said another course will take place with new students to complete an archive of all the documentation that has been produced and reproduced, which will be in the control of the IAAHS.

A public history project is also in the works to communicate the information to the public, he said.

“That could be a podcast, a speaker series, whatever format that would be best to communicate the information we could,” Beamish said.