Standards Correlations
This lesson correlates to the National History Standards.
This lesson correlates to the National Standards for Civics and Government.
Cross-curricular Connections
Share this exercise with your history, government, and language arts colleagues.
Analyzing the Document
1. Make a copy of the featured document for students, and direct them to read the poster and answer the following questions:
After the students have completed the assignment, review it and answer any questions they might raise. Then discuss more generally the contribution and status of black soldiers in the Civil War. Ask students to read the additional documents provided with this article to encourage further discussion.
Creative Writing Activities
2. Share with students the information in the introductory note; then assign them to draw on information from the note and the document to write one of the following:
Oral Reports
3. President Harry S. Truman's Executive Order 9981, issued in 1948, marked the transition of the black military experience from a period
of segregated troops to one of integrated forces. The order provided for "equal treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services" and commanded the desegregation of the
military "as rapidly as possible." (Page 2 of this document is also available.)
Divide the class into six groups: Civil War, Indian wars, World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam, and Persian Gulf War. Assign each group the task of locating information about black troops engaged in these conflicts and presenting the information they discover in an oral report. Encourage imaginative presentations. Students should collect information about pay, equipment, service assignments, promotion potential, treatment of black prisoners of war, and the relation of combat service to the struggle for equal rights in each instance. Each group should attempt to locate statistical information about the numbers of black soldiers in arms for their assigned conflict and the numbers of black casualties, decorations, and commissioned officers. Outstanding individual or unit contributions in engagements should be described as well.
For Further Research
4. Select one of the following activities as a followup:
The Web site of the National Gallery of Art provides valuable information about the Shaw memorial.
For More Information
Many of the documents included in this project were selected by the project manager of the National Archives and Records Administration's Civil War Conservation Corps (CWCC). You can read more
about this volunteer project in an article that originally appeared in the summer 1997 issue of Prologue: Quarterly of the National Archives and
Records Administration.
The photographs included in this project are available through the National Archives Catalog.
You can perform a keyword, digitized image and location search in the National Archives Catalog. The online catalog's advanced functionalities also allow you to search by organization, person, or topic.
The online catalog is a searchable database that contains information about a wide variety of NARA holdings across the country. You can use the online catalog to search record descriptions by keywords or topics and retrieve digital copies of selected textual documents, photographs, maps, and sound recordings related to thousands of topics.
Currently, about 80% of NARA's vast holdings have been described in the online catalog. Thousands of digital images can be searched in the online catalog. In keeping with NARA's Strategic Plan, the percentage of holdings described in the online catalog will grow continually.
Freeman, Elsie, Wynell Burroughs Schamel, and Jean West. "The Fight for Equal Rights: A Recruiting Poster for Black Soldiers in the Civil War." Social Education 56, 2 (February 1992): 118 - 120 [Revised and updated in 1999 by Budge Weidmann].