The Forgotten Black Soldiers Who Fought for America and Were Never Given Full Credit

 Black Americans have fought in every major war in American history.

They fought in the American Revolution. They fought in the Civil War, on both sides, though overwhelmingly for the Union. They fought in the Indian Wars. They fought in the Spanish-American War. They fought in both World Wars. They fought in Korea and Vietnam.

In almost every case they fought under conditions that were more difficult than those of their white counterparts. And in almost every case the rights and recognition they were promised for that service were delayed, denied, or delivered too late to matter to the men who earned them.

The Civil War

The 54th Massachusetts Infantry was one of the first official Black regiments in the Union Army. Formed in 1863 it was commanded by white officers but made up of free Black men from across the North who volunteered to fight.

On July 18, 1863, the 54th led the assault on Fort Wagner in South Carolina. They suffered devastating casualties charging a heavily fortified Confederate position. Their conduct under fire was widely reported and helped change public opinion about whether Black soldiers could be effective fighters.

What is less discussed is what those soldiers were paid. White Union soldiers received thirteen dollars a month. Black soldiers received ten dollars a month minus three dollars for clothing, effectively seven dollars a month. The 54th Massachusetts refused to accept any pay at all for over a year in protest of the unequal treatment rather than accept wages that acknowledged they were worth less than white soldiers.

The Buffalo Soldiers

After the Civil War the US Army organized several regiments of Black soldiers for service on the western frontier. They were given that name by Native American tribes they fought, reportedly because their hair reminded warriors of the mane of a buffalo.

The Buffalo Soldiers fought in some of the most difficult terrain and conditions of the post Civil War army. They had some of the lowest desertion rates in the entire military. They received fewer resources and lower quality equipment than white regiments.

The Tuskegee Airmen

During World War Two the military was segregated. The Tuskegee Airmen were the first Black military aviators in the United States Armed Forces, trained at the Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama.

They flew more than 15,000 sorties in Europe and North Africa. They won more than 150 Distinguished Flying Crosses. Their record in combat was outstanding.

When they came home they came home to a segregated country that would not let them vote in much of the South and where they could be denied service at a restaurant or a hotel.

The right to live with full dignity in the country they had fought for was not a reward they received. It was a right they had to keep fighting for after the war was over.

These men deserve to be at the center of American military history. Not in a footnote. At the center.

Robert Lee Beers III is a writer and digital preservation advocate based in North Charleston South Carolina.

The Dance Marathons of the Great Depression Were Not Entertainment. They Were Survival.

 If you have ever seen photographs of 1930s dance marathons you might have assumed they were entertainment. Couples dancing on stage in front of audiences. Judges watching. Prizes for the winners.

The photographs do not show everything.

Dance marathons during the Great Depression were endurance contests where couples danced for days, weeks, and sometimes months without stopping. Partners took turns sleeping, one propped up and shuffling in place while the other dozed on their partner's shoulder. Both of them kept moving. You had to keep moving. If you stopped you were eliminated.

Why They Did It

The prize for winning a dance marathon was typically cash. But for many of the couples who entered, winning was not the only point. The real appeal was what happened while you were competing.

Organizers provided contestants with food, shelter, and medical attention while the contest was running. Couples who entered and stayed in the contest had a roof over their heads and meals provided for as long as they kept dancing.

During the worst years of the Depression when unemployment reached 25 percent and families were losing homes and going hungry, that arrangement was not entertainment. It was survival.

Young couples with no money and nowhere to go entered these contests and stayed in them as long as their bodies held out. Not for the prize. For the food and the floor to sleep on.

What the Contests Were Actually Like

Marathon dancing was brutal. Contestants danced up to 45 minutes of every hour with a 15 minute rest period. This continued 24 hours a day.

Contestants developed sores on their feet. Their legs swelled. They suffered from sleep deprivation so severe they hallucinated. Some contestants collapsed and had to be carried by their partners to stay in the contest.

Audiences paid admission to watch. The spectacle of exhausted human beings shuffling in circles and occasionally collapsing was apparently entertaining enough that the contests turned profits for their organizers.

Some contests ran for months. The record was reportedly over 4,000 hours of continuous dancing spread over more than five months.

States eventually began banning dance marathons on public health and safety grounds. By the late 1930s most had been shut down.

Why This Matters

Dance marathons are remembered, when they are remembered at all, as a quirky cultural artifact of the Depression era. A strange fad.

What they actually were is a window into how desperate conditions were for ordinary Americans during the Depression. How far people would go for food and shelter. What human beings will endure when they have no better options.

The couples who entered those contests are not in the history books. Their names are not recorded anywhere. But they were real people in real need who found the only solution available to them and used it.

That is a Depression story that deserves to be told alongside the breadlines and the Hoovervilles.

Robert Lee Beers III is a writer and digital preservation advocate based in North Charleston South Carolina.

The American Civil War Started and Ended in the Same Man's Front Yard and He Was Not a Soldier

 Wilmer McLean was a retired wholesale grocer living on a farm called Yorkshire near Manassas Virginia in 1861.

He was not a soldier. He was not a political figure. He just owned a farm that happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

On July 21, 1861, the First Battle of Bull Run, the opening major engagement of the Civil War, was fought on and around his property. A cannonball came through his kitchen. His farm became a staging area for Confederate troops.

McLean had had enough. He decided to move his family somewhere safer. Somewhere the war would not follow them.

He chose a small quiet town in southern Virginia that seemed safely distant from the fighting.

The town was called Appomattox Court House.

What Happened Next

McLean moved his family to a comfortable brick house in Appomattox Court House and settled in. For most of the war the town was indeed quiet and far from the major campaigns.

On April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee sent a message to General Ulysses S. Grant requesting a meeting to discuss terms of surrender. A location was needed.

Someone in the area suggested the McLean house. McLean agreed.

In his living room, on the afternoon of April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant and the Civil War effectively ended.

Wilmer McLean is reported to have said afterward that the war began in my front yard and ended in my front parlor. The line is so perfect that historians have sometimes doubted he actually said it. But whether he said it or not, it is true.

What This Story Means

There is no larger lesson buried in the story of Wilmer McLean. It is not a parable about fate or inevitability. It is just one of those true stories that no fiction writer could get away with because it is too neat and too strange.

A man tried to escape a war by moving away from it. The war followed him across Virginia and ended in his living room.

The furniture from the McLean house was taken as souvenirs by Union officers after the surrender. Chairs, tables, and other pieces were carried off before McLean could stop it. He received little or no compensation for them.

He spent years afterward trying to recover financially from the disruptions of the war and the loss of his property.

The man whose house bookended the most significant conflict in American history died in 1882 having never fully recovered from it.

History has a sense of irony. Wilmer McLean experienced it more directly than almost anyone.

Robert Lee Beers III is a writer and digital preservation advocate based in North Charleston South Carolina.