‘Colored’ Troops Gain Belated Due

After 131 years of being deliberately ignored and then unjustly forgotten, the service of 215,000 American soldiers and sailors was officially recognized Tuesday in somber sunrise ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery.

These were the men and boys who, from 1863 to 1865, in arduous labor and hand-to-hand combat, served in “colored” units of the Union Army and Navy in the Civil War.

The event, held at Arlington’s white marble amphitheater, was part of a weeklong dedication of an African-American Civil War Memorial.

The 8-foot-high monument, by sculptor Ed Hamilton, will incorporate African-American military figures of the Civil War era, as well as those of female civilians and a curved wall bearing the names of the 185,000 men serving in the “U.S. Colored Troops.”

It is to be completed next year.