If you don’t read history professor Heather Cox Richardson, you probably should. She has been providing news summaries with useful context for a while now, and occasionally a tidbit like this creeps in:
On July 18, 1863, at dusk, the Black soldiers of the Massachusetts 54th Volunteer Infantry of the U.S. Army charged the walls of Fort Wagner, a fortification on Morris Island off Charleston Harbor that covered the southern entrance to the harbor and thus was key to enabling the U.S. government to take the city. The 600 soldiers of the 54th made up the first Black regiment for the Union, organized after the Emancipation Proclamation called for the enlistment of African American soldiers. The 54th’s leader was a Boston abolitionist from a leading family: Colonel Robert Gould Shaw.
Shaw and his men had shipped out of Boston at the end of May 1863 for Beaufort, South Carolina, where the Union had gained an early foothold in its war to prevent the Confederates from dismembering the country. The men of the 54th knew they were not like other soldiers; they were symbols of how well Black men would fight for their country. Were they men? Or had enslavement destroyed their ability to take on a man’s responsibilities?
The whole country was watching… and they knew it.
The rest is here. This sort of story is echoed in World War I all-black regiments, who fought at least as well as the all-white regiments, and were championed by one of America’s most decorated and respected military men, General Pershing, derisively nicknamed “Black Jack” by the white regiments for his support for the black regiments; the Tuskegee Airmen (332nd Fighter Group and the 477th Bombardment Group) in World War II; and several other groups in American history of which I’m not aware, I’m sure.
Thanks, Professor Richardson.
