We had just arrived at the Visitors Center in Boston Common when the woman behind the counter mentioned the Black Heritage Trail tour starting at 2 p.m. It was about 15 minutes beforehand, and we were thrilled that we’d been lucky enough to be there for it.
The tour would start at the top of a hill up a paved path behind the center, right in front of a sculpture that I especially wanted to see: a bronze relief memorial to Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, the African American soldiers who fought heroically, selflessly and fatally in an attempt to take over Fort Wagner near Charleston, SC, in 1863.
They were the subject of the 1989 movie “Glory” starring Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman and Matthew Broderick. Click on the photo above for a full view.
I had read about the sculpture and seen photos of it, and I was about to gaze on it in all its glory. My traveling buddy Kristin and I made our way up the hill, and to my right, I could see the back of a gray stone wall. I figured the sculpture was somewhere near there. On the other side, maybe, I said to Kristin.
We walked up several stone steps, and to my right I came face to face with the men of the 54th. It was breathtaking. Sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens had set them in motion, their feet mixing with the horse’s feet, both stepping outward and forward, their face stoic and determined. He had given them purpose and life in bronze.
The campaign to honor the men with a memorial was initially organized and funded by black Boston businessman Joshua B. Smith in 1865, but it was not the only one to celebrate their exploits. Sculptor Edmonia Lewis made a bust of Shaw in 1864, and Robert Lowell commemorated them in a 1960 poem “For the Union Dead.”
A famous New York sculptor, Saint-Gaudens was contracted to create the memorial in 1884, and the first idea was to make a single piece with Shaw on a horse but it was later changed to a large-scale structure after Shaw’s mother said the equestrian figure was “too grandiose,” according to one account. It was one of six bronze Civil War monuments that Saint-Gaudens made, including one of President Lincoln.
“Saint-Gaudens’ relief portraits were characterized by deeply cut and irregular surfaces, creating a vibrant rather than static impression; their vitality was enhanced by the sculptor’s near-impressionistic treatment of details,” according to one very accurate description of his reliefs.
The movie “Glory” made the story of the 54th real to many of us. It was the first black regiment organized after President Lincoln agreed to allow African American soldiers in the Union army in January 1863. Frederick Douglass was among the people who urged blacks to join, as was black abolitionist Lewis Hayden, whom I learned from the tour encouraged Douglass to make a speech to get the word out across the country.
Douglass – or “Freddy D,” as tour guide Wayne McCray called him – spoke at the African Meeting House in Boston, which was a recruiting site for the regiment. Two of Douglass’ sons joined the 54th.
Shaw died in the attack, and 281 of his 600 men were killed, missing, wounded or held as prisoners. The fort was finally taken, and the 54th went on to fight in other battles.
As we waited for the tour to begin with McCray, a National Park Service ranger, I walked back down the steps to the back of the memorial, curious about the wording I had seen when I first approached it. Engraved in stone were the names of the men of the 54th, with an inscription date of 1982.
McCray told me later that it was only a sampling of the men who served. “It’s not good information,” he said. One site noted that they were the names of the 62 men who died in the attack.
McCray, though, was full of good info about the 54th, whose narrative was the first he told us on the 90-minute or so tour up and down steep hills in Beacon Hill, where beautiful houses ran into the millions of dollars, he noted in answer to a question.
During the 1800s, a healthy African American community seemed to have lived within arm’s length of wealthy whites on the northern slope of the area before most moved to the South End and Roxbury, according to a National Park Service pamphlet on blacks in the city. These were the homes of the blacks who fought along with other white abolitionists, and set up their own aid societies, including the Prince Hall Masons.
While we stopped at several historical homes (which are now private residences), only one bore a plaque identifying it as such: the Lewis and Harriet Hayden House (her name, though, was missing). Their home was a stop on the Underground Railroad, and Lewis Hayden reportedly threatened to set off gunpowder inside the house if any slave catchers tried to enter.
As for the 54th and the memorial, McCray told us: For two years, the soldiers refused to accept their wages because they were paid less than white soldiers; the pine cone in the bottom left corner of the statue represented early colonial Massachusetts and the trees that fed its shipbuilding industry. The “floating lady” at the top was holding an olive branch of peace.
Saint-Gaudens spent 14 years completing the sculpture, using black New Yorkers as fill-ins for the men of the 54th regiment, McCray said. A dedication ceremony was held on May 31, 1897, and 65 of the original soldiers showed up. The memorial faces south, and McCray told how the men of the 54th paraded past it on that day. It was the same route they had taken past the State House and Boston Common more than 30 years before as they headed South to war.
One of those was Sgt. William H. Carney, who was wounded in the battle while recovering the flag to make sure it wasn’t captured by the Confederates. Carney was awarded the Medal of Honor, the first black soldier to receive it.
Another interesting stop on the tour was the African Meeting House, said to be the oldest surviving black church building in the country. It is now part of the Museum of African American History. Two of the pews in the back of the church are original, McCray noted.
Read about my other stops in New England: Kennebunk, Portland, Brimfield and Martha’s Vineyard.
I was just at the African Meeting House with a group of people three months ago. I use to go there often, since my Church was participating in the campaign to help fund the renovations.
I’ve lived within walking distance of these two Black Monuments for nearly forty years, after coming to Boston (from Georgia) to attend college.
I love our Black History.
Hello, fellow Georgian. It was a fascinating walk into African American history in Boston.
Sherry