Fig. 6. The Storming of Fort Wagner, Lithograph by Louis Kurz and Alexander Allison, 1890
Typical of young African American males of my generation, I was ashamed of slavery. In America, pride of one’s identity was based upon love of freedom and the willingness to die protecting that freedom. African Americans were taught that their ancestors did practically nothing to gain their freedom largely because slavery was not that bad. The South argued that slavery was the natural state of blacks and that slavery represented their best interest. We were taught that slaves were liberated by President Lincoln and the Union army. There was a lack of African American Civil War history that supported slave victimization and a lack of personal responsibility. Identity is defined by history, so African American identity is largely shame.
I was a product of my environment; we are what we are taught. However, the truth can set you free; my mind was liberated by the truth. For ten years, I lived next door to a black Civil War re-enactor named Alvin Pinckney. I often saw him dressed like a Civil War soldier on Saturday mornings. He said he was part of a Union artillery Civil War reenactment group. The group was white, but he said blacks had fought in the Civil War as well. Noble, I thought, but delusional. I had never heard of blacks fighting in the Civil War. I had seen thousands of Civil War soldiers in movies and on TV, but I had never seen black Civil War soldiers. Blacks were always portrayed as servants or laborers by the media, and unfortunately, that’s how we learn a lot of American history. It was a well-established fact that blacks were freed by Abraham Lincoln and white Civil War soldiers because slaves were helpless victims. For ten years, I watched Alvin leave for Civil War reenactments on summer mornings, thinking he was fooling himself.
Several years after returning to Flint, Michigan, from Columbus, Ohio, I saw the movie Glory. I thought of Alvin as I watched the black men storm Fort Wagner. The movie supported Alvin’s claims; maybe I was wrong. Once the movie appeared at local rental stores, I was embarrassed by the lack of interest in it. There were always plenty of available copies of Glory to rent, when, at the same time, competing movies were in short supply. The movie went on sale in the discount rack, but there were no takers, even after the price was cut in half.
The black soldiers who stormed Fort Wagner deserved more respect, and I needed to make a retribution for my ignorance and lack of faith in them. I had a conscience planted in my brain by my father. Although he commonly used the N-word to refer to blacks, he had an unending dedication to his ancestors. Every year, he attended the home coming of a church his grandfather, Charlie White, ministered at in Holly Grove, Arkansas. He supports our ancestral cemetery that is across the street from the church.
I made a plan to create a painting of black troops storming Fort Wagner. First, I sought to find a Civil War battle image and then have an artist friend replace white Union faces with black faces. At a bookstore outlet, I found the perfect book, Great Battles of the Civil War, by Martin Graham and George Skoch. The book contained prints of Civil War battles that were painted and published in 1880s by Louis Kurz and Alexander Allison.
I was in for a life-altering shock. The battle of Fort Wagner, which I had planned to create, had already been painted and published in 1890. On top of that, I discovered that there were other battles that included other black units, such as the battle of Olustee, Fort Pillow Massacre, and the Battle of Nashville. I thought there was only one black Civil War regiment when there were actually over 130 black regiments. I also thought that the black regiment only fought in two battles. With a little more research, I discovered that black regiments actually fought in more than four hundred battles. This was a mystery to me; why was black Civil War history hidden from me, or why didn’t I look for it? With every step, Alvin appeared right, and I was wrong.
But how wrong was I? A trip to the Flint Public Library would surely prove that this information was hidden and my ignorance was justified. But no such luck; a book written by a former slave, one year after the Civil War, was easy to find. I didn’t even need the aid of a librarian. The book was written by William Wells Brown and was called The Negro in the American Rebellion. Brown collected material during the Civil War that he felt would be important to blacks. The story of Big Bob is a good example of the type of material Brown collected. Big Bob was a slave preacher forced into Confederate labor with his followers. He overpowered his guard, put on a Confederate uniform, and marched his slaves to the Union line. The Union requested that he become a guerilla fighter, attacking Confederate targets behind Confederate lines.
In his book, Brown also included information about the religious sentiment of the men, which was not shown in the movie Glory. Apparently, the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts carried a Christian banner. Brown wrote, “This is the first Christian banner that has gone into our war. By a strange, and yet not strange, providence, God has mistic this despised race the bearers of his standard. They are thus the real leaders of the nation.”[1]
I was not, however, alone in my ignorance about Brown. Although the book was in plain sight, it had only been checked out seven times in ten years. I was not alone.
I wanted my own copy of the book, so I tried to obtain a copy at a bookstore. After describing the book to the salesperson, she replied, “This should be a classic.” However, no copies had been ordered in ten years, so copies were no longer available. While browsing through a section of Civil War books, a book called Bullwhip Days: The Slaves Remember came to my attention. I immediately passed it by because I had been taught that slaves can contribute nothing of value. Despite my reluctance, something told me to pick the book up. My father had known former slaves and had a great deal of respect for them; they had purposeful lives. My great-grandmother (Clara White) was a former slave, and she frequently babysat him. They could not read or write, but they built schools, he often said, so that their descendants would learn to read. The book was a compilation of slave narratives, gathered through interviews of slaves who were part of the Work Progress Administration (WPA) program in the 1930s. Black universities had wanted to document the slave experience before all surviving ex-slaves were dead. The first narrative was that of Mary Reynolds, taken when she was one hundred years old. Mary was blind at the time of the interview, probably from glaucoma. The eye disease is very aggressive in African Americans and a leading cause of blindness. My mother, two of her brothers, and her mother went blind from the disease, and I have it as well. Each day that I can see is a gift from God. I skimmed the first page out of curiosity, to prove to myself that she had nothing worthwhile to contribute. For the third time, I was wrong again—however, big time, this time.
My curiosity was ignited by my discovery of black Civil War soldiers and the slave narratives. For many years, I researched both African American slavery and black Civil War history. I discovered that the American history that I was taught in school omitted many aspects of slave life as well as omitting practically all black Civil War history. History is written for an audience, and the primary goal of the author is to make money. A large audience is the southern public, which also has a significant influence on African American history. The southern white audience believed their Civil War cause was noble and blacks were better off as slaves. This southern perspective is what I was taught in school.
There is also an important question that needs to be answered: why is there so little support of slave history among African Americans? We have been all taught that slaves were victims that needed to be rescued and all that victims can possibly gain is justice. African American purpose is therefore limited to acquiring justice, which is self-centered. However, if African Americans saw slaves as victors, effort would be directed toward respecting and learning from slaves such as the study of the slave narratives.
Chains were used to hold the bodies of slaves in bondage, and Jim Crow was used to shackle the minds of African Americas. With the truth and help of Jesus, It is possible to turn these victims into victors. Jesus believed that “the truth shall set you free” (John 8:32).
[1] William Wells Brown, The Negro in the American Rebellion (n.p.: Lee & Shepard, 1866), 153.