African American Civil War Memorial

The African American Civil War Memorial is where 209,145 names finally got a wall. The United States Colored Troops — 175 regiments raised after 1863, a tenth of the Union Army, men fighting for their own and their families' freedom — had gone 130 years without a national monument. The Spirit of Freedom memorial on U Street, dedicated in 1998, put Ed Hamilton's bronze infantrymen and sailor under the watching figure of Freedom, with the Wall of Honor carrying every name the records held.

The placement is the point — the Shaw neighborhood, named for Robert Gould Shaw of the 54th Massachusetts, on the corner where contraband camps had sheltered the first self-emancipated people of the war. The memorial stands steps from the Metro station that bears its name, in the district that was Black Washington's heart.

The names are the archive — soldiers of the USCT's 175 regiments, the white officers who led them, 2,145 Hispanic surnames, and the note that the Navy's 20,000 Black sailors aren't listed because the Navy was never segregated. Lincoln's judgment is carved into the base: 'without the military help of the black freedmen, the war against the south could not have been won.'

The African American Civil War Memorial is the archive's names file — the 1998 Spirit of Freedom monument on U Street where the 209,145 USCT soldiers are finally inscribed, in the Shaw neighborhood named for the 54th's colonel.