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Oct 13, 2015 · After the slave Harry Jarvis escaped a gun-toting master and sailed to Fortress Monroe, Virginia, sometime in the spring or early summer of 1861, he asked General Butler to let him enlist.
- Harry Jarvis
- Susie King Taylor
- Mary Armstrong
- Garrison Frazier
- Cynthia Nickols
- Elijah Marrs
- Sarah Nash
Most white Americans, including Abraham Lincoln, saw the U.S. Civil War as a conflict between white people. Harry Jarvis, who recently escaped from slavery, knew it would take Black men fighting and Black women aiding the cause to achieve a Union victory. Upon seeking refuge at Fort Monroe, Jarvis expressed this sentiment to General Benjamin Butler...
Susie King Taylor worked as a teacher at a Union camp as a young teenager until she set out with the 33rd United States Colored Troops. She served in the Union army for four years without pay. After the war, Taylor moved back to Savannah, Georgia with her husband to open a school and work as a teacher. When her husband died shortly after the move a...
Even after the Emancipation Proclamation, freedom was not guaranteed to all who were enslaved. Upon hearing the decree however, Mary Armstrong knew she had to go to Texas to find her mother. In doing so, she risked re-enslavement behind Confederate lines. At age 17, Armstrong set-off on her journey, for reunion in and of itself was a particularly p...
In 1865, Black ministers and church officials were invited to speak with General William T. Sherman and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton about the needs of the newly liberated community. Garrison Frazier was chosen to speak for the ministers, saying, “the freedom, as I understand it, promised by the proclamation, is taking us from under the yoke of b...
One form of systematic re-enslavement was through forced apprenticeships. Following the Civil War, children seen by white officials as “orphaned” could be placed with their former enslaver until they turned of age. Cynthia Nickols’ grandson was taken in this manner. Nickols fought for her grandson to live with her. She stood up against slavocracy e...
Pastor, teacher, and community organizer Elijah Marrs was a founding member of the Loyal League to defend African Americans against the Ku Klux Klan. “Of this society I was secretary, and we were always in readiness for any duty,” said Marrs. “For three years I slept with a pistol under my head, an Enfield rifle at my side, and a corn knife at the ...
Sarah Nash saw Black men and women being taken advantage of by the government even after the war ended and freedom became law. She pushed back against the powerful system of re-enslavement and oppression by organizing Black business women. Her example inspired generations of Black women to pursue entrepreneurship and community building. This articl...
Kidada Williams: In 1861, Harry Jarvis was waiting for an opening. Watchful, wiry, and shrewd, Harry was enslaved on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. And the long shadow of the growing Civil War had tightened his attention toward escape. Harry Jarvis: My master, he was the meanest man on all the Eastern Shore, and that’s a heap to say. It’s a ...
- Gavin Wright
Jun 19, 2017 · Harry Jarvis, one of the early arrivals at Monroe, had predicted that African Americans would serve on the front lines. He had asked Butler to enlist him in the army but was told “it wasn’t a black man’s war.” Jarvis responded that “it would be a black man’s war before they got through.”
From the very beginning of our nation's history, however, African American knew better, recognizing that these fights were their fights. In 1861, Harris Jarvis, a slave on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, found himself under the thumb of a particularly cruel master.
Feb 12, 2011 · Born a slave on the eastern shore of Virginia, Jarvis took to the woods for several weeks after the Civil War began, where he survived owing to fellow slaves who brought him news and food....
Feb 21, 2013 · Thursday, February 21, 2013. Profile in Courage: Henry Jarvis, 55th Massachusetts Volunteers. In May of 1861 Henry Jarvis, a recently escaped slave, sailed across the James River and claimed asylum in the Union-held citadel of Fortress Monroe.
