Elegy for the Native Guards

The American Civil War (1861-1865) is well-recorded and celebrated to this day, with figures such as Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, and William Tecumseh Sherman gaining mythic stature as a result of their actions. Many American military units trace their history, or the history of the home base, to the Civil War. However, Black soldiers’ participation in their own liberation and defense is far less memorialized. Units such as the 1st Louisiana Native Guard, one of the first all-Black regiment in United States history, are far-less discussed. While the soldiers were Black, the officers of this regiment (sans one) were all white. During Reconstruction, the Union officers of the regiment were replaced with Southerners, and no further Black officers were appointed. These Southern officers essentially used the Black soldiers as unpaid labor (slaves). The troops were terribly mistreated, and even those who remained to the end of their term were often denied pensions and veterancy status.

The United Daughters of the Confederacy is a Neo-Confederate group founded 30 years after the end of the Civil War to glorify the Confederate cause, promote Confederate ideals, and promote the Klu Klux Klan. It is the descendent of less ideologically driven women’s groups that aimed to fundraise and organize for the burial of Confederate soldiers in the South. Over time and as Reconstruction progressed, the program shifted to creating a new narrative of the Civil War built around ideas of the Lost Cause (that the South was unambiguously heroic and fighting against tyranny) and magnanimous and kind behavior towards enslaved Black people. To this end, the organization became extremely active in the early 20th century, constructing hundreds of monuments and memorials around the heroism of Confederate leaders--especially in areas with large Black populations. The Ship Island plaque is one such memorial: Built at a tourist site in the majority-Black state of Mississippi, this plaque omits the Black soldiers who died at the site and highlights the Confederacy, despite the fort being occupied by Union troops (mostly Black) throughout the entire war.

Hurricane Camille, making landfall in August of 1969, was a category five storm--one of the most severe ever recorded. While maximum wind speeds and storm surge are unknown due to the storm destroying the majority of measuring equipment, the damage was massive and even affected the geography of the Gulf of Mexico. Camille cut a channel in the middle of Ship Island, splitting it into the East and West Ship Islands, which was later in-filled by the Army Corps of Engineers in an effort to prevent coastal erosion.