February is Black History Month in the United States. To my chagrin, the month is nearly over and I've not posted anything about it. Hopefully, this post will make up for that.
One of the most important events in Black History in this country was the Civil War -- the final blow that ended slavery. But although tons of books have been written and movies made about the Civil War, most of them are about Whites, and how the war affected them. It would give one the impression that all the heros of the war were white.
Of course, that isn't true. In 1989, the movie Glory came out and did a little to help dispel that notion. The movie did a good job of showing the bravery and patriotism of the African-American men who fought as soldiers during the Civil War. But these weren't the only African-American heroes of that time. There were the abolitionists like Sojourner Truth, and the members and leaders of the Underground Railway like Harriet Tubman.
And there were others that most of us have never heard of, like the hundreds of slaves in the South who acted as spies for the Union Army. All of these courageous slaves risked their lives, and many gave their lives, for our Union even though it was not yet perfect.
Author Ken Dagler said, "What the Union officers found very quickly with those who crossed the line ... was that if you talked to them, they remembered a great more in the way of details and specifics than the average person ... because again they relied totally on their memory as opposed to any written records." The slaves had not been allowed to learn to read and write, and therefore developed extraordinary memories that served them well as spies.
One of these brave people was William Jackson (pictured above). Jackson was a slave, and his owner was Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America. Since he was "just a slave", Jackson was ignored by Davis and other Whites as he went about his duties. Jackson quietly overheard many Southern secrets, and it never occurred to these racist Southern leaders that a slave would not only understand what they were talking about, but commit it all to memory.
Jackson was able to tell Union Officers about Southern troop deployments, supply problems and other valuable information gathered from the office of the Southern President. This was extremely valuable information.
It is not known what happened to Jackson (or most of the other slave spies) after the war, but we owe them a debt of gratitude. These brave African-Americans helped to make the United States a better country (and indeed even to survive). They are true American heroes.
Brilliant post. Always glad to learn more about American history, and even with the advent of Black History Month, we still have not reconciled Black History with American History, in that far, far too much of Black/African-American History is NEVER JOINED TO "American" history. Those old Houghton-Miflin textbooks ripped us all off, I think.
ReplyDeleteIt'd be nice if, instead of the rare university requiring students to study "both" histories, we were able to finally integrate the history that we teach ALL students. "Looking For Lincoln," on PBS, is a nice first step, but we've got a long way to go. November is Native American History Month, but how much do we see in public, in the MSM, about the Cherokee, the Apache, the Iroquois, the Choctaw? Bupkis.
We've come a long way, but we've got so much further to go.