The Sultana Disaster Museum

Join Memphis-based author and historian Jerry Potter for a lecture and discussion about the State of Alabama's role in the story of the Sultana disaster.  Confederates captured over 2,000 Union prisoners, including many from Tennessee, at battles in the state during September 1864. Some of those men were taken to the Cahaba prisoner of war camp near Selma. Once freed, nearly 1,000 of those former prisoners boarded the Sultana at Vicksburg. Just a few days later, over half of them perished when the steamboat exploded on the Mississippi River on April 27, 1865.