A monument to the black soldiers of the 29th Connecticut will be unveiled tomorrow in New Haven, Connecticut. The project was organized by Harrison Mero [pictured left] who is president of the Descendants of the
Connecticut 29th Colored Regiment C.V. Infantry:
As a child, Mero said, all he knew about the war came from John Wayne movies and Margaret Mitchell's book, "Gone With the Wind."
"When you saw something about the Civil War back then, our people were
depicted as slaves working in the big house, talking in broken
English," Mero said. "We assumed the war was all white people. My
people were never shown on the battlefield."
I wish I could be there.
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Do you think the SCV will comment on this?
- Jarret
They will comment only if they somehow find a way to show that Confederates had all along supported the raising and arming of fugitive slaves and free blacks in the North. (LOL)
The 29th CT recruited throughout the state. There is one enlistment credited to my town, and several men from the regiment buried in area graveyards. They were brigaded with the 7th-9th Us colored Infantry in the 10th corps in the latter part of 1864. CT also recruited black soldiers for the 30th Regiment, but the 4 companies that had been raised by June of 1864 were sent to Virginia and combined with other companies to form the 31st USCV. At the Crater, CT members of the 31st lost 17 k, 44 w, 14 missing and 4 captured.
Source: Hines, B (2002): Civil War Volunteer Sons of Connecticut)
I find Mr. Mero’s particularly intriguing. How prominent are African-American historians in the study of the Civil War? In my opinion, it seems this is a field of study which is still dominated by white people.
Chris, — To a certain extent this is true, but the field has evolved significantly since the late 60s – early 70s. Some of the most prominent historians in the field are African American. Mero is indeed an intriguing figure.