'No power on earth can deny': African-American soldiers are subject of MLK Day programming at the Atlanta History Center

Medal of Honor recipient William Carney

Sgt. Maj. Milton Holland took command of his company of the 5^th U.S. Colored Troops when all its white officers were killed or wounded. In the 54^th Massachusetts’ assault made famous in the movie “Glory,” Sgt. William Carney planted a flag atop the enemy’s fort and safeguarded its return to Federal lines.

Nicholas Biddle was left scarred after a mob in Baltimore attacked Pennsylvania troops. And Hubbard D. Pryor escaped slavery to trade his ragged clothing for a uniform with the 44^th USCT.

These courageous African-Americans and other who served with or aided the Federal army during the Civil War will provide inspiration for those attending special MLK Day programming at the Atlanta History Center on Jan 20.

Among the highlights coming with free admission that day at the AHC and the Margaret Mitchell House are the touring exhibition “Black Citizenship in the Age of Jim Crow” and a play in which an activist in 1963 imagines a conversation with four iconic freedom fighters.

The student-oriented soldiers experience will take place hourly between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. at the history center’s renowned Civil War permanent exhibit, “Turning Point.”

“Take on the role of a real soldier who fought in the Civil War for the United States Colored Troops after volunteering for duty in 1863,” says the program description. “Presented with various real-life scenarios, you must make vital decisions that could affect your life and well-being.”

Biographical sheet at the Atlanta History Center

Museum interpreters will lead the immersive experience, said Joanna Arrietta, director of author and family programs at the AHC, which is in the city’s Buckhead neighborhood. She said the talks also will include the 8^th, 55^th and other USCT regiments.

Arrietta says: “We prioritize children participating first and allow adults to participate and follow along within our space constraints. Educators lead the group; each participant is given a profile sheet of a USCT soldier, and travels through the exhibit in role, through the lens of the USCT experience of the Civil War. Scenarios such as everyday soldier life (pay, medical access) and combat (the Battle of the Crater) are explored in this interactive walking tour.”

Milton Holland

Students at first are given a few fictionalized facts about a particular soldier but then learn their actual story as they go through the program. The handout includes a factual biographical sketch and resources for participants to learn more on their own.

Formal formation of black units followed the adoption of the Emancipation Proclamation.

About 175,000 soldiers served with the USCT, and they are credited with helping to turn the tide at several battles and campaigns in the last two years of the wear. Regiments had free men and former slaves. About 19,000 African-Americans served in the U.S. Navy.

Carney was the first African-American to receive the Medal of Honor, which also was awarded to Holland, who won distinction at Chaffin’s Farm in Virginia. You can learn more about Holland here, Carney here, Biddle here and Hubbard here.

USCT units were led by white officers and it took time for soldiers to receive pay equal to their white counterparts. They still had limited career opportunities and faced some racism within the Union army. Some freed men captured by Confederate units were sold into slavery.

(Atlanta History Center)

But they served with distinction, with soldiers earning 25 Medals of Honor and black regiments making up about 10 percent of the Federal army by the war's end. Among engagements in which they proved their courage was the July 1864 Battle of the Crater at Petersburg.

Frederick Douglass wrote of them: “Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letter, U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, there is no power on earth that can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship.”

Honoring 44th U.S. Colored Troops: From slaves to Union warriors

His clothing ragged, Hubbard D. Pryor made his way into Union lines in Tennessee in April 1864.

Pryor (left), an escaped slave from Polk County, Ga., quicky joined up with Company A, 44th U.S. Colored Troops. A photographer captured these images before and after he took on the blue Union uniform.

Perhaps because of the photography style of the day, or because of his ordeals, Pryor’s expression gives little evidence of the pride he surely felt.

The 44th, which was organized at Chattanooga, Tenn., and Rome and Dalton, Ga., eventually saw action in Georgia, one of the few African-American units to fight in the state.

Recruitment of colored regiments began in full force following the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1863.

On Wednesday, a marker honoring the service of the 44th and other African-American units will be dedicated at Fort Hill School in Dalton. It was one of many regiments formed during the war, in which 200,000 African-Americans fought for the Union army and navy.

Former U.N. ambassador and Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young will make the keynote address.

The sign, sponsored by the Georgia Historical Society, the Georgia Battlefields Association and the Georgia Department of Economic Development, honors the 44th USCT, whose enlisted men were mostly former slaves.

By late summer 1864, the 44th USCT contained some 800 black enlisted men and was commanded by Col. Lewis Johnson, who was white, according to the New Georgia Encyclopedia.

On Aug. 15, 1864, the regiment helped drive off a Confederate cavalry attack on the Western and Atlantic Railroad.

Approximately three-fourths of these black soldiers were doing garrison duty in Dalton on the morning of Oct. 13 when advance units of the 40,000-man Army of Tennessee, commanded by Confederate General John Bell Hood, converged unexpectedly upon the little village, cutting off all avenues of retreat.

According to the encyclopedia, Hood vowed to take no prisoners if the Union defenses were carried by assault and later added that he "could not restrain his men and would not if he could."

Although Johnson claimed that his black troops displayed the "greatest anxiety to fight," he surrendered to Hood and secured paroles for himself and the 150 or so other white troops.

“The black troops, by and large, did not want to surrender. They knew that capture for them would mean death or beatings or at the very least being returned to slavery,” Robert Jenkins, a member of the Dalton-Whitfield 150th Civil War Anniversary Committee, recently told the Daily Citizen in Dalton.

The regiment's 600 African-American enlisted men suffered a harsh fate. Some were re-enslaved, while others were sent to work on fortification projects in Alabama and Mississippi. Many ended the war as prisoners in Columbus and Griffin, Ga., where they were released during May 1865 in what one of them described as a "sick, broken down, naked, and starved" condition, the encyclopedia says.

Pvt. Hubbard Pryor survived the war and married in 1870. In 1890, he wrote to learn if he were eligible for a pension, but he died that August before he could apply.

The enduring photos of him are among the finest of tributes to African-Americans who fought for their country.

• Official report from Col. Johnson on Dalton
• African-Americans in non-combat roles