YAP CELEBRATES BLACK HISTORY!
DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE 54TH???
Tired, hungry and proud, the black soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry stood in the light of the setting sun and awaited the call to battle on the evening of July 18, 1863. The air was filled with the rumble of big guns, and the very ground on Morris Island, South Carolina, trembled beneath their feet. The regiment’s baptism of fire had come only two days before, but the memories of that sharp skirmish had already begun to fade in the shadow of the awesome task that now lay before them.
The path that had brought these determined men to the embattled sands of South Carolina had been a long one, born of idealism and fraught with difficulty. That they had succeeded in the face of bigotry and doubt was due in great measure to the colonel who led them. Slight and fair-haired, Robert Gould Shaw appeared even younger than his 25 years. But despite his initial trepidations, the Harvard-educated son of abolitionist parents had assumed the weighty responsibilities of command, and never wavered in his fervent resolve to show friend and foe alike that black soldiers were the fighting equals of their white counterparts…
To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, the Youth Ambassador
Program created a song about the 54th Regiment, the first black regiment
commissioned by the Union Army in the Civil War. Nearly 50 men from New
Bedford enlisted in Company C of the 54th, including Sergeant William H.
Carney, the first African American to earn a congressional medal of honor.
CHECK OUT THE TRACK AND DOWNLOAD IT HERE
YAP! 