Most interesting in a Flickr search for "African American Civil War Memorial":
"African American Civil War Memorial"
by dbking of flickr
Attribution License
Description:
African-American Civil War Memorial
10th and U Streets NW
Sculptor : Ed Hamilton
Date: 1997
Medium: Bronze
---late May 1865, weeks after the surrender of the Conferderacy at Appomattox, the Grand Review of the Union troops galvanized the nation. During the Grand Review of troops some 200,000 Union soldiers marched in wide, even rows down Pennsylvania Ave from the Capitol to the White House. The Grand Review was incomplete, not one of the 166 regiments of the United States Colored Troops (U.S.C.T) regiments made up of African-Americans had been invited to participate. Their absence went unnoticed by most, but not all. A reporter for
The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote: “their time will come”
---Long overdue, recognition of black soldiers and sailors of the Civil War has come. The most recent of the Civil War related monuments in the city is to honor the African-American troop who fought not only for a abstract concept of freedom to preserve the Union but literally for their own liberation.
---few realize how many blacks fought nor the extent of their involvement. 178,000 African-American troops from eight northern states, seven southern states and the District of Columbia fought in more than four hundred engagements, of which thirty nine were major battles in every theatre from 1863 to 1865, except Sherman’s March to the Sea. About 37,000 African-American members of the military died in the war. Sixteen black soldiers and seven black sailors received the Medal of Honor for bravery.
---African Americans volunteered to fight for the Union almost as soon as the Confederate cannons fired on Fort Sumter. Federal law prohibited the from serving in state militias and they had little success getting into the Union army. The navy did not exclude blacks, and more than 19,000 served as sailors during the war. As the war went on, abolitionist, such as Frederick Douglas, mounted pressure to allow African Americans into the army where they could fight
to destroy slavery
---In September 1862 after the major Union victory at Antietam, Lincoln issued a preliminary emancipation proclamation paving the way for African American enlistment. In 1863 when the emancipation proclamation was made law, African Americans enlisted in droves.
---Many northerners doubted the ability of the former slaves to fight effectively, but from the first major battle in which they did (two regiments of Louisiana’s Corps d’Afrique took part on an bleepault on Port Hudson, LA, May 27, 1863) the doubters were proven wrong. After two regiments of newly recruited freedmen beat back a Confederate attack on Milliken’s Bend a Union outpost on the Mississippi River in June 1863 did it begin to change minds. Further helping to change
minds was the now famous 54th Mbleepachusetts regiment with the charge on Fort Wagner outside of Charleston, SC under the command of the young Boston abolitionist, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. The Mbleepachuesetts 54th Regiment was immortalized in the movie Glory as well as by a statue on Boston’s CommonGarden commemorating that charge which claimed the lives of nearly
half of the men in the regiment, including Shaw.
---District of Columbia Councilman Frank Smith, empowered by the film Glory, himself a veteran of the 1960’s civil rights movement, became even more aware of the need for a memorial to honor the valor of those African Americans who took up arms and fought for their freedom.
---1991, Frank Smiths resolution proposed the monument and was quickly approved by the city council. President George H W Bush signed into law an act officially establishing the African American Civil War Memorial. Incorporated in 1992, the African American Civil War Memorial Freedom Foundation
working with the National Park Service, the National Archives, Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, The Commission of Fine Arts, The National Capital Planning Commission, and The National Capital Memorial Commission began planning the new monument.
---Frank Smith envisioned this memorial in an inner city neighborhood with strong ties to the capital’s black community. The site at 10th and U Streets is doubly appropriate. Not only is the site in the middle of one of the most historic and vibrant black communities in Washington, but one that long ago was named for Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. The Shaw community’s main street (U St) is
often referred to as the “Black Broadway”. This neighborhood predates Harlem as a center of African American history.
---Collaborative efforts by Deverouax and Purnell Architects and Ed Dunson and Associated resulted in a design concept for the site that was approved by all of the arts agencies.
---a wide stone plaza whose centerpiece is a sculpture partially enclosed within a long low semicircular wall. Affixed to the stone wall are steel panels inscribed with the names of the more than 178,000 African American solders and sailors who fought in the Civil War as well as the 7000 white officers who let the Colored Troops.
---over twenty designs were put forth during the open competition by artists of African American descent for the sculpture that would be the centerpiece. Ed Hamilton of Louisville, KY whose works include:
…Boxer Joe Louis in Detroit, Michigan
…Booker T. Washington for Hampton Institute in Hampton, Virginia
…Amistead Memorial in New Haven, Connecticut
---the statue: 3 black infantrymen and a sailor guardedly look out in high relief from the convex side of a 12’ high wall. On the concave side, An African-American man bound for war is bid farewell by his wife, their you children and his elderly parents. Above all of them hovers the hooded Spirit of Freedom.
---The commission of Fine Arts wrote that Hamlton’s sculpture conveyed “the sense that they were fighting for the protection of their families from the slave trade…and for equal protection under the law”
---Hamilton’s sculpture makes tangible the sentiments of African American soldiers like Samuel Cabble, who escaped from a slavemaster in Missouri and made his way to Mbleepachusetts where he joined the 54th Mbleepachusetts Colored Infantry and then marched off to fight in North Carolina. Cabble’s letter made it clear what he was fighting for, he wrote: fighting for his wife, still enslaved in Missouri, and, as he wrote her, “against that very curse that has separated you and me”
---names of soldiers and information relative to them is now being compiled and placed on the web as a project call the Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System.
---September 1996, some 300 African American Civil War re-enactors clad in Union blue uniforms strode down Pennsylvania Avenue to martial tunes like “Marching Thru Georgia” the same tune to which the white troops had marched to in the Grand Review 131 years earlier. Several direct
descendants of soldiers from the Colored Troops marched that day including Kevin Douglbleep Green, the great-great-grandson of Frederick Douglbleep, and great grandson of Charles Douglbleep who had volunteered with the 54th Mbleepachusetts
---This long overdue parade acknowledged the African Americans who fought for freedom, and it opened a five day celebration organized by the African-American Civil War Memorial Foundation which culminated in the dedication of the site of the first national memorial honoring these troops.
As the Philadelphia Inquirer reporter had predicted, indeed their time has come at last!
