A stunning collection of stoic portraits and intimate ephemera from the lives of Black Civil War soldiers.. Though both the Union and Confederate armies excluded African American men from their initial calls to arms, many of the men who eventually served were black. Simultaneously, photography culture blossomed-marking the Civil War as the first conflict to be extensively documented through photographs. In The Black Civil War Soldier, Deb Willis explores...

Documents the recruitment, training, and struggles of African American soldiers during the Civil War and examines the campaigns in which they participated.

"On the stormy night of August 29, 1776, the Continental Army faced annihilation. After losing the Battle of Brooklyn, the British had Washington's army trapped against the East River. The fate of the Revolution rested heavily on the shoulders of the soldier-mariners from Marblehead, Massachusetts. Serving side-by-side in one of the country's first diverse units, they pulled off an "American Dunkirk" and saved the army. In the annals of the American...

Natasha Trethewey's muscular, luminous poems explore the complex memory of the American South--history that belongs to all Americans. The sequence forming the spine of the collection follows the ''Native Guard'', one of the first black regiments mustered into service in the Civil War. In Trethewey's hometown of Gulfport, Mississippi, a plaque honors Confederate POWs, but there is no memorial to these vanguard Union soldiers. ''Native Guard'' is both...

Drawn from new sources, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian presents a gripping narrative that recreates the events that inspired hundreds of slaves to pressure British admirals into becoming liberators by using their intimate knowledge of the countryside to transform the war.

Examines the experiences, events, and accomplishments of African Americans during the Civil War.

In the midst of the bloody U.S. Civil War, an enslaved man named Robert Smalls carried out a dangerous plan. Smalls secretly took control of a Confederate steamboat, the Planter, and sailed the ship toward a Union fleet. A little known story of courage, hope, and peril during the Civil War, this true account celebrates an unsung American hero.

Describes the Civil War battle of Morris Island, South Carolina, during which Sargeant William H. Carney became the first African American to earn a Congressional Medal of Honor by preserving the flag.