“The perception was the Black man didn’t participate in the war, that they (Black men) were passive in wars, not participators,” says Mitchell, a dean and professor of history at Fisk University and a member of the Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission of Tennessee. “Participation suggests ownership in something. If you start presenting people as soldier, you give them manhood.”
Mitchell’s educational experience on the topic mirrors that of most American students in the 150 years since the war began in 1861. The big headline — that the Civil War freed the slaves and ended the Southern rebellion — overshadowed many of the rich details about Black contributions. Even now, little is taught about the estimated 200,000 Black men (many of them runaway slaves) who suited up as Union soldiers. Federal records show that Blacks represented nearly 10 percent of the Union army by the time the war ended. Even less is said of the thousands of Black women who supported them.
