Black Civil War soldiers to get long-delayed honors on Cumberland County memorial
It’s 151 years late.
But come Monday, five Black soldiers from Cumberland County who died in the Civil War while serving with the Union Army’s U.S. Colored Troops will have their names added to the rolls of a longstanding monument on Carlisle’s Public Square that pays perpetual tribute to the county’s Civil War casualties.
The addition to the Carlisle monument is an outgrowth of an ongoing effort to elevate the Black history of Carlisle and Cumberland County, including a push to have a new monument added to the county’s Veteran’s Courtyard that would honor the service of all known county residents who served with the U.S. Colored Troops.
Research associated with those efforts has led to the identification of these five Black soldiers - all members of the celebrated 54th Massachusetts - who perished while serving in the war. They are:
Pvt. Henry King, 27, a West Pennsboro Township resident killed in action at James Island, S.C. on July 16, 1863.
Pvt. Augustus Lewis, 20, a Shippensburg area resident killed in action at Fort Wagner, S.C., on April 15, 1863.
Pvt. Edward Parks, 43, a Carlisle resident who died of dysentery at Morris Island, S.C. on Oct. 3, 1863. Parks was survived by. wife and two daughters, and his wife received a widow’s pension. She later relocated to Philadelphia.
Sgt. Alfred Whiting, 23, a Carlisle resident who was wounded and captured at James Island, S.C., and died on June 26, 1865 in a Union Army hospital in Alexandria, Va., where he is buried. Whiting was married and his wife was awarded a widow’s pension.
Pvt. Stewart Woods, 27, a Penn Township resident who was wounded and captured at James Island, S.C. on April 15, 1863, and died of disease at Wilmington, N.C. on March 15, 1865.
Historians have a couple of theories as to how this oversight happened, but it all seems to be rooted in the racial segregation that was a hallmark of the time, even in the Union states.
Cara Curtis, archives and library director at the Cumberland County Historical Society, noted that the origin of the original Civil War combat units was regionally based, with units organizing on a regional level and being identified by their state of origin.
The all-Black U.S. Colored Troops, especially at the outset, tended to see willing Black volunteers from all over answer specific recruitment calls, and travel to where those units were formed.
“Massachusetts is the first to say: ‘We’re enlisting people of color,’ and people from all over come up and there are quite a few from South Central Pennsylvania that go to Massachusetts to enlist.... As soon as they can fight, they go a distance north to enlist,” Curtis said.
Records show that of the 1,007 soldiers enrolled in the 54th - one of the first to be mustered - more than 300 were Pennsylvanians.
When the public monument in Carlisle was planned in the late 1860s and erected in 1871, it was likely that the organizers started, and perhaps finished, with the lists of the Cumberland County-based units. It’s unclear whether the failure to dig deeper to include any Colored Troops at that time was an error of omission or commission.
The question lingers because of the open knowledge at the time that there were Black veterans in Carlisle - enough to warrant the establishment of a Black Grand Army of the Republic veterans post - and the Decoration Day parades after the war seemed to have included the prominent Black cemeteries in the town.
“It (the existence of Black veterans) wasn’t a secret,” Curtis said.
https://www.pennlive.com/news/2022/05/five-cumberland-county-black-civil-war-soldiers-to-get-forever-honors-monday-151-years-later.html
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It took 151 years to be "un-cancelled" but am glad to see that this did finally happen.
It goes along with FINALLY CANCELLING what should have been "cancelled" a century ago - the traitorous Confederate crap that was erected and was prominently displayed, along with being affixed to the names of schools and streets and bridges for some idiotic reason, including in northern/Union states, over that same period of time. 
Just this the past couple months in Philly, 2 schools voted to rename themselves -
By Mallory Falk March 29, 2022
When students returned to the elementary school at 12th and Federal last fall, it had a new name: Fanny Jackson Coppin. Now, it has a new sign to match.The school community gathered for an unveiling ceremony on Tuesday, cheering as principal Kelly Espinosa revealed a blue, white and yellow sign honoring the new namesake, a woman who was born into slavery and became a trailblazing Philadelphia teacher and educator.
“Our students have been excited learning about who Fanny Jackson Coppin was, what her legacy was, how she was an advocate, she was a leader,” Espinosa said. “We are excited to see how our students invest more in our school community with this change.” The South Philadelphia school, formerly known as Andrew Jackson Elementary, was officially renamed last June.
Community members had pushed for several years to remove the president’s name, part of a nationwide movement to rename schools whose namesakes have racist histories. Jackson owned enslaved people and forcibly removed indigenous people from their land, leading to thousands of deaths.
He had no significant connection to Philadelphia. “Andrew Jackson is not someone we should teach Philadelphia students to honor and admire,” read one petition to rename the school. “He represents the worst of this country’s history of enslavement and genocide.”
https://whyy.org/articles/philly-fanny-jackson-coppin-school/
By Tom Waring
May 24, 2022
Woodrow Wilson Middle School, 1800 Cottman Ave., is about to get a new name. The school held a Zoom call on Tuesday afternoon to announce the new name: Castor Gardens Middle School. Eighth-grade teacher Chelsea Maher, a member of the renaming committee, said Wilson’s name was recommended for changing due to the former president’s alleged connection to the KKK and re-segregation of the federal workforce. She also pointed to the diversity of the school.
Wilson served as president from 1913-21. Previously, he had been president of Princeton University and governor of New Jersey. Wilson has been dead for almost 100 years, and few people seemed to be bothered by the school name. But after George Floyd’s death in May 2020, rioters around the country began tearing down statues and busts and painting over murals of certain white people in history.
Wilson has been on the radar ever since.
In the last two years, for instance, Camden and Washington, D.C. changed the names of their Wilson high schools, and Princeton took his name off its public policy school, all done due to Wilson’s views and policies on race.
https://northeasttimes.com/2022/05/24/wilson-middle-school-getting-a-new-name/
Doesn't mean you're immune from prejudice. PA was a Democratic state during the Civil War. James Buchanan, the President before the Civil War, was referred to as a doughface, or southern sympathizer. He was a contributor to the Dred Scott decision, which he thought would settle the slavery question once and for all, but only wound up only inflaming the "free" states.
Lynchings were not confined to the south. There was one in Coatesville, PA in 1911. The victim was Zachariah Walker. I grew up the next town over and never heard of the event. I drove by the history marker on time going to college and made a point to stop the next time I passed it (because I was a history buff). Shocking to say the least.
One only has to drive through Gettysburg and see Dixie up. When others point out that flying and selling that flag is in poor taste, the locals push back and say that's part of their history. I'll note that the battlefield itself was kept up by Union Army veterans until they became too few and too old to maintain it. When the Union soldiers were asked at some point to allow Confederate veterans to join them and place markers on the field the overwhelming answer was "hell no". Most of the Confederate markers and memorials were placed by the US Park Service after 1900 when American attitudes had changed (and most Union soldiers had died).
If you look for the caption on Timothy O'Sullivan's Harvest of Death, he makes it clear in no uncertain terms how northern folks felt about the Confederate invaders:
"[A]round is scattered the litter of the battle-field, accountraments, ammunition, rags, cups and canteens, crackers, haversacks &c, and letters that may tell the name of the owner, although the majority will surely be buried unknown by strangers, and in a strange land. Killed in the frantic efforts to break the steady lines of an an army of patriots, whose heroism only excelled theirs in motive, they paid with life their price for treason, and when the wicked strife was finished, found nameless graves, far from home and kindred."
We have a long way to go, but name changes are a good start.