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...

On July 4, 1861, the schooner S.J. Waring set sail from New York on a routine voyage to South America. Seventeen days later, it limped back into New York's harbor with the ship's black cook and steward at the helm. While the story of that ill-fated voyage is one of the most harrowing tales of captivity and survival on the high seas, it has been tragically lost to history. Now reclaiming William Tillman as the American hero he deserves to be, historian...

"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...

Almost immediately after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, abolitionists began to call for the raising of black regiments. The South and most of the North responded with outrage. Southerners vowed to enslave black soldiers captured in battle, while many northerners claimed that blacks lacked the courage to fight. Yet Boston's Brahmins, always eager for a moral crusade, launched one of the greatest experiments in American history....

"It was a mild May morning in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1862, the second year of the Civil War, when a twenty-three-year-old slave named Robert Smalls did the unthinkable and boldly seized a Confederate steamer. With his wife and two young children hidden on board, Smalls and a small crew ran a gauntlet of heavily armed fortifications in Charleston Harbor and delivered the valuable vessel and the massive guns it carried to nearby Union forces....

From the initial sparks of revolution in Boston to the climactic Siege of Yorktown and beyond, hear the story of the war within the Revolutionary War through the eyes of some of the most significant African American figures of our country's foundation, including Crispus Attucks, Peter Salem, Phillis Wheatley, and James Armistead Lafayette. Executive produced and narrated by NBA legend, best-selling author, and respected activist Kareem Abdul-Jabbar,...

Image keeping a secret for decades. People have always known Ashley Bryan as a celebrated artist, storyteler, writer - a legend. But there was a role Ashley had that almost no one knew: soldier. In 1943, at nineteen years old, Ashley was drafted out of art school and into World War II. During his service he was the technical sergeant with charcoal pencils and paper stuffed into his gas mask; a friend and art teacher to the children of Boston, where...

Americans have long heard the story of Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders charging up San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American War. But often forgotten in the great swamp of history is that Roosevelt’s success was ensured by a dedicated corps of black soldiers—the so-called Buffalo Soldiers—who fought by Roosevelt’s side during his legendary campaign. Roosevelt admitted that the black troops actually spearheaded the charge, beating him...

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.