| African American Civil War Sailors Identified | |
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Dateline: 11/17/00
Over the course of the Civil War, more than 200,000 African-Americans served in branches of the Union military, fighting to secure their own liberty. While few official records of their service remain, approximately 18,000 African American Union sailors have been identified and will be commemorated in services today at the U.S. Navy Memorial, 701 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, D.C., at 1 p.m. EST.
Vice Adm. Edward Moore Jr., the Navy's senior African American flag officer, currently serving as commander, Naval Surface Force Pacific, and National Park Service (NPS) Director Robert Stanton, will join Dr. William Dudley, director of the Naval Historical Center, to mark the formal announcement Friday.
Over the course of the Civil War, 18,000 African American men, and more than a dozen African American women, served in the U.S. Navy, about 15 percent of the total enlisted force. These sailors served on almost every one of the nearly 700 Navy vessels. Eight African-American sailors earned the Medal of Honor for their heroism in battle.
When
research began, Naval historians expected to find records of no more than about
10,000 African-American Civil War sailors. However, the Naval Historical Center,
in conjunction with a Howard University study and the National Park Service,
documented an additional 8,000 African-American participants.
Researchers from Howard University's Department of History examined hundreds of thousands of pages of naval records housed at the
National Archives in Washington, D.C., for evidence about African-American
sailors. Advised by a committee of experts in Civil War naval history from the
Naval Historical Center, the NPS, the National Archives and the Smithsonian
Institution, the researchers systematically pieced together the history of the
African American sailors in the Civil War Navy. The database was compiled from surviving personnel records, rendezvous
reports and ship's muster rolls, and then compared with the Navy's Index to
Service Histories prepared by the Navy Department during the World War II era.
The research continues today as the partners examine pension files in order to
supplement this list of names with a more complete record of information about
the experience of the naval enlistees and their families throughout the Civil
War era. The sailors' names and military history will be incorporated into the Civil
War Soldiers and Sailors System Database (CWSS). Personal information, naval
service and muster records included in the database are accessible through the
Internet at http://www.itd.nps.gov/cwss/. The CWSS is a cooperative effort by the NPS and several other public and
private partners, to computerize information about the Civil War into a database
containing basic facts about servicemen who served on both sides during the
Civil War. The goal of the CWSS is to increase the American people's
understanding of this important era in American history by making this
information widely accessible.
