They fought and died for freedom: Black soldiers in the U.S. Civil War

Memorial Day weekend is upon us and as we prepare to attend ceremonies for members of the U.S. military who died in service to this country, I want to salute those black men and women who fought so that my people could gain their freedom.


**Black soldiers, including more than a dozen Congressional Medal of Honor winners, fought in 449 Civil War battles. More than one-third of them died during the war.**


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**Glory is a celebration of a little-known act of mass courage during the Civil War. Simply put, the heroes involved have been ignored by history due to racism. Those heroes were the all-black members of the 54th Regiment of the Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, headed by Col. Robert Gould Shaw, the son of an influential abolitionist. *Despite the fact that the Civil War is ostensibly being fought on their behalf, the black soldiers are denied virtually every privilege and amenity that is matter of course for their white counterparts; as in armies past and future, they are given the most menial and demeaning of tasks. Still, none of the soldiers quit the regiment when given the chance. The unofficial leaders of the group are gravedigger John Rawlins and fugitive slave Trip, respectively representing the brains and heart of the organization. The 54th acquit themselves valiantly at Fort Wagner, SC,* charging a fortification manned by some 1,000 Confederates.**

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**It would do us good as a culture and a society to pay more attention to the important and heroic work that black soldiers performed at places other than Fort Wagner: at Port Hudson and Milliken’s Bend in the summer of 1863, for example, in conjunction with Grant’s ultimately successful campaign to force the surrender of Vicksburg, and, a year later in Virginia, during the siege of Petersburg. *We could benefit from learning more about each of the 16 black men who earned the Congressional Medal of Honor during the war, and about the experiences, courage, tenacity, and dignity of the tens of thousands of United States Colored Troops who, as white soldiers mustered out after Appomattox, remained on very dangerous occupation duty with their units in the angry and unreconstructed South.*

*I think many—perhaps most—Americans still tend to “remember” the Civil War overwhelmingly as a clash of white men against other white men, and I would suggest that truncating the story in this way has troubling implications for how we understand ourselves as a nation and a people.***


Read More: http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/5/28/1664563/-They-fought-and-died-for-freedom-Black-soldiers-in-the-U-S-Civil-War

Much more at the link. Their story, the courageous men and women ( read about Susie King Taylor) that fought and died. The first troops to serve were not even compensated for their first 18 months. As the article states they were in the year 1863 finally offered them a salary.... half of what white soldiers were being paid for the same job. Hmmm, imagine that.