A legacy left unmarked for black Civil War vets

[samgrant]

www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-black-soldiers-feb29,1,6167614.story (video)
chicagotribune.com

A legacy left unmarked for black Civil War vets

Gravestones sought for thousands

By Dahleen Glanton
Tribune correspondent
2:36 AM CST, February 29, 2008

HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C.—For more than a century, the bodies of some 300 black soldiers who died in the Civil War have lain in unmarked graves on the bank of Skull Creek harbor.

These former slaves who fled the plantations to fight for freedom on the side of the Union Army are heroes few people know about.

The small plot of land where they are buried is overshadowed by multimillion-dollar condos and a private marina — symbols of the transformation that has occurred in Hilton Head over the last 50 years, changing the island from a predominantly black town to a city of gated communities for the wealthy.

But for Howard Wright, 57, the great-great grandson of a former slave who fought in the war, Talbird Cemetery is part of his family's heritage and, he said, an integral part of American history that should not be forgotten.

So he has set out on a mission to get the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to provide headstones for the more than 3,000 blacks in South Carolina who served in what was called the U.S. Colored Troops. In recent months, he has received about 100 markers from the department, including one for his great-great grandfather, Caesar Kirk-Jones, who died in 1903 at age 74.

"History has been rewritten when it comes to the legacy of the Colored Troops," said Wright, a historian who founded the Sankofa Restoration Project. "They had more at stake than anyone else and they turned around the destiny of this country."

Wright has spent 25 years researching the histories of the men buried at Talbird Cemetery as well as more than 1,000 other black Civil War soldiers at some 100 similar small cemeteries in Beaufort County, S.C. Wright is also trying to get new headstones for several of the 1,000 soldiers in Beaufort National Cemetery whose markers are inaccurate or damaged.

For the descendants, to have relatives who died fighting in a war that ended slavery is an honor they speak of with pride.

"Every black family in Hilton Head has someone buried [at Talbird]," Wright said, adding that Talbird is Hilton Head's largest black cemetery. "So this is important to a lot of people."

But Wright's work does not stop there. His goal, he said, is to have VA headstones on the graves of all 200,000 black Union veterans nationwide.

Wright said he began researching his ancestry in 1982 after the death of his grandmother. After he obtained a headstone for his great-great grandfather, he made a proposal to the VA.

"I said, 'What if someone had the records of all the Civil War soldiers who fought [for the Union] from South Carolina, particularly Beaufort County, would they be eligible to get a stone?' They said, 'If you can prove it, you can.' And I said, 'We have it.' "

It is the VA's policy to furnish upon request a government headstone or marker for the grave of any deceased eligible veteran in any cemetery around the world. There is no charge for the headstone.

The role of black soldiers in the Civil War has always been controversial, with advocates arguing that they have never received proper recognition.

As soon as the war started in 1861, free blacks were eager to fight for the Union but they were turned away because of a 1792 federal law that barred them from bearing arms for the military. President Abraham Lincoln early on had considered recruiting blacks to fight, but he feared that it would cause more states to secede from the Union.

As the war raged on and fewer whites signed up, Congress passed a law in 1862 freeing slaves whose owners were fighting for the Confederacy. A bit later, Lincoln presented a draft of the Emancipation Proclamation, which gave freedom to all slaves in the Confederate states and made them eligible to fight in the U.S. military.

The Army's first formal black regiment, the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, was formed in Beaufort County.

During the war, nearly 40,000 black soldiers died.

Wright calls that a sacrifice worth noting.

"Here we are, 142 years later and nobody ever said thank you to them," he said. "This is the first time all the families in South Carolina will be able to say thank you to their ancestors who fought in this war."

dglanton@tribune.com

Copyright © 2008, Chicago Tribune