a memorial salute 2022

You I'm thinking of today, I don't know many of your names.    They say around 180,000 served;  around 60,000 of you died in service.

You showed up.   You wanted to fight.   You wanted to defend freedom, for obvious reasons.    You said, "We are ready and would go."    But the Army, who desperately needed soldiers to fight the enemy, wouldn't take you.    They'd have rather had no one than you.

Our President said if you served it would push states over the brink to join the Confederates.    But eventually the war got so desperate that they lifted the ban.    You were allowed to serve.

Serve, not fight.    Black soldiers, even ones who had escaped captivity and were no longer called property, hadn't been allowed to serve since the beginning.    Free, but not free to fight for freedom.   

The Navy, though, began accepting you to labor as cooks, stewards, coal-trimmers, and pilots, paid at three-quarters the white rate.    Then, when it became clear slavery wouldn't continue after the war, you were let in to all the services when Emancipation was proclaimed.    U. S. Colored Troop regiments formed, with white commanders.    You fought, and fell, with honor.

Some, when captured by the Confederate army, were returned to those they'd escaped from, or sold into captivity.    Some of you were hanged.    All behaved so courageously that many in the North who hadn't wanted you to fight even on their side were finally convinced.   

Some among you, before you fell in further battle, refused to accept any pay that wasn't equal to white soldiers'.    So you weren't paid at all, those of you who were left, till the war was nearly over.

You fought in 449 battles.    You never lived to see what kind of life became available to those you served with and their families.    You never went home to try to find work, land, representation.    Others faced those later-in-life things.    You fought, and died, and now you lie beneath the earth.   

We who remain must remember, must un-erase you.    You may never have been saluted in life by anyone outside your group.    Today let us, at last, salute you.