(gentle music)
- They say New York is
gonna add colored troops.
Finally after all this
time, we're to sign up,
line up, put our lives on the line,
become tools, instruments of destruction,
the blunt fist of the Union.
Soon black faces in blue
uniforms will be answering
to white men wrapped in
red, white, and blue.
Ain't nothin' changed really.
Just a fancy sleight of hand.
- I wanna join the ranks of fighting men,
like Frederick Douglass's sons,
enlisted in the Massachusetts 54th.
- I wanna wear the
uniform to gain respect.
For all my lamentations
and cries for freedom,
I swear, nobody knows my name.
- [Narrator] In all, 26 black
men from Thompkins County
enlisted in the United
States colored troops
at the St. James AME Zion Church.
- I pray to my father for guidance.
Does a Good Shepherd
lead his lambs to die?
- All new recruits of
the 26th United States
Colored Infantry B Company,
I'm Colonel Silliman
your commanding officer.
I've been commissioned to you
by the Federal Army of the United States.
You should know in truth,
the bullet has no color
attached to its pain.
- We gave everything.
- Listen, America, we are your children,
born with the power to grow and change
to build and construct a new way.
We are civil warriors.
