Ballot Blocked Episode 1: Service, Sacrifice, and Citizenship

An African American soldier in Union Army uniform sits with his family for a photograph. More than 180,000 African American men served in the United States Colored Troops (USCT) during the Civil War.

Library of Congress

This episode takes us to the 1860s and the period of the Civil War. The nineteenth amendment would not be ratified for another half century, but a lack of voting rights didn’t stop women from being active in civic and political life. In Philadelphia, for example, free African American women played a critical role in supporting the Union Army.

To learn more about this wartime service, we interviewed Dr. Holly A. Pinheiro, Jr. His forthcoming book, The Families’ Civil War, is under contract with the University of Georgia Press. Dr. Pinheiro’s scholarship is focused on free African Americans living in Pennsylvania between about 1850 and 1930. It examines the toll that enlistment in the Union Army took on soldiers and their families. His work also highlights the ways that Black women claimed civil and political rights, despite being denied access to the ballot.

• Ballot Blocked Episode 1: Service, Sacrifice, and Citizenship

  
  

  This episode explores the service and sacrifice of Northern African American families during the Civil War. Dr. Holly A. Pinheiro, Jr. discusses the toll that enlistment in the Union Army took on soldiers, their relatives, and the broader community in and around Camp William Penn in Philadelphia. He also highlights how a lack of voting rights did not stop African American women from asserting their civil and political rights before, during, and after the Civil War.

  Credit / Author:

  Eleanor Mahoney

  Date created:

  06/11/2021

  Audio Transcript

  Eleanor Mahoney: Hello and welcome to Ballot Blocked, a history of women's fight to access the vote. I’m Eleanor Mahoney. In this six-part series, we talk to historians and scholars to learn about women’s path to the ballot, from the period of the Civil War, through the women’s suffrage movement, the Civil Rights movement, and the 2020 election. It’s a story of courage and perseverance, of disappointments and hard-won victories. Some of the people you will hear about are well-known, their names on monuments and memorials. Others may have received less recognition, but their achievements are no less impressive. The history of women’s voting rights isn’t a progressive or linear narrative. Passing legislation is only one step along the way to the ballot box. The laws have to be enforced and that takes more organizing and more struggle. New barriers to voting access are still being created today. One hundred years after the 19th amendment barred states from denying the vote based on sex, the fight for social, economic, and political equality continues. Ballot Blocked explores how we got here and asks where we might be going next when it comes to voting rights. This episode takes us to the 1860s and the period of the Civil War. The nineteenth amendment would not be ratified for another half century, but a lack of voting rights didn’t stop women from being active in civic and political life. In Philadelphia, for example, free African American women played a critical role in supporting the Union Army. To learn more about this wartime service, I spoke with Dr. Holly Pinheiro. He is a professor at Augusta University in the Department of History, Anthropology, and Philosophy. His forthcoming book, The Families’ Civil War, is under contract with the University of Georgia Press. Dr. Pinheiro’s scholarship is focused on free African Americans living in Pennsylvania between about 1850 and 1930. It examines the toll that enlistment in the Union Army took on soldiers and their families. His work also highlights the ways that Black women supported their enlisted husbands, sons, and relatives. Many of the soldiers whose lives Dr. Pinheiro explored were based at Camp William Penn in Philadelphia. They were among the more than 180,000 Black men who served with the United States Colored Troops or USCT during the Civil War. The camp was the largest USCT site in the country and about 11,000 soldiers trained there between 1863 and 1865. At a time when African Americans could not legally claim full citizenship, including the right to vote, enlistment served as a powerful rejoinder. An assertion of belonging by Black families to a nation that had long denied their humanity. But this decision came with significant risk for not only the soldiers themselves, but for their families and their descendants as well. As Dr. Pinheiro documents in his research, military service has effects that last for generations. Understanding these impacts is personal for him. His work is inspired by his own mother’s military service and his experience growing up in a military family. Holly Pinheiro: My project is in a roundabout way, my story. My mother served for 25 years. I was raised overseas. My mother served in combat, and this is pre-accessibility of the internet. So, when she would be deployed for six to eight months, I had to watch the news like everyone else, and I'd see a bombing or whatever, and just wonder is my mom coming home because I know she's stationed in some of these locations. That fear, that anger that I had in my mother for what I, as a child, that she would leave us, the anger that I had towards the military and the government. Just because I would always get really annoyed with how people talk about, these events soldiering, and thank you for your service, but, they are not, I always felt, that they're not taking the time to think about what it meant to me, to my grandmother, to my brother and to our community, as we're the ones who are having to literally deal with all these different emotions and feelings. I think that without question, I'm trying to connect to these individuals that I study to try to take off the glorification of the war and make it more real. If we just take out the tactics, and that's not that tactics aren't important, but what does it mean to an individual's family, right? Even the decision to enlist is going to have unintended, longstanding, in many cases, damaging consequences for a family. What does it mean when they get the notification that someone has passed? What does it mean if this person comes back disabled in any form? What does it mean as we have the concerted attempt to erase the sacrifices of African Americans from the war effort, all these different emotions? I'm trying to basically apply it to what these individuals experienced. Eleanor Mahoney: Dr. Pinheiro’s scholarship calls attention to the stories of poor and working-class Black women who supported their enlisted family members during the Civil War. These women provided crucial support for life at Camp William Penn. Some got jobs in the camp laundry; others worked nearby to remain close to relatives. They were afraid it might be the last chance they would see their loved ones alive, and they wanted to get as much time with them as possible. This wartime service gave Black women an opportunity to participate in public civic life during a turning point in U.S. history, as Dr. Pinheiro explains. Holly Pinheiro: So, for me, women are very critical to the Civil War, they're very critical in these records, and I wanted to put them at the forefront of this story rather than focus on what does it mean to fight at this battle? For me, it's more, what does it mean for these women, these children, who are hearing the news or dealing with the loss of life? These Black women are going to the military camp to watch their relatives train or to say goodbye potentially for the last time, and they're putting their bodies into physical harm. To me, it was like these powerful stories about Black women, long before they're being seen as federal or state citizens, are demanding to be part of the nation, demanding that their families are recognized for their sacrifices. Black women, particularly in the North, were always visible at USCT camps and not necessarily those directly related to the men or boys that are getting ready to serve. These are people within the community, in the case of Philadelphia that have ties to the African Methodist Episcopal church, the AME church, for example, some of them actually are school teachers, and there are these very important prominent people with ties to the Underground Railroad. They're seeing that the United States military and federal government is not giving these soldiers proper medical care, right? In some cases, if you look at New York, they're sleeping on dirt. They don't have a stove to cook. They don't have clean water. They can't take baths with warm water in the wintertime. So, it's the Black community, and particularly Black women, are basically going to the camps and informally taking the responsibility that the government should be doing as these men prepare to sacrifice their lives. And we need to recognize that because for so long the scholarship has focused on the prominent role that white women play, if we talk about the Sanitation Commission, for example, but Black women are finding their own ways to involve themselves and make themselves visible on these military spaces. And I think to me, that's a demonstration of their empowerment. I would also argue that they are agitating for a new, of what some called cultural citizenship. So, rather than looking at the right to vote, they're saying that they belong to the United States in this case because of their actions and their sacrifices and their support. So, trying to expand the term citizenship to recognize those who don't have rights to vote. And the most fascinating thing that I do briefly talk about in the book is, a number of African Americans will actually get married on Camp William Penn's grounds. It's recorded in the Christian Recorder, which is a Black newspaper tied to the AME church. That is really fascinating since these are spaces meant for national patriotic training and all this, and yet Black communities will make those spaces to continue to define their families in the context of the nation. Eleanor Mahoney: The meaning of citizenship was bitterly contested in 1860s America. After the Civil War ended, Congress passed a series of laws that promoted civil and political rights for African Americans. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 stated that anyone born in the United States was a U.S. citizen, with certain rights such as the ability to make contracts, own property, and sue in court. It also stated these rights could not be denied based on race. The 14th Amendment likewise formalized the principle of birthright citizenship and forbade states from denying citizens equal protection under the law. Notably, Indigenous peoples were excluded from these bills and most would not be considered citizens until 1924. Almost immediately, state and local governments across the country acted to curtail these new rights. But, Dr. Pinheiro says, it is important to recognize that through their wartime service, as well as other acts, like paying taxes, Black men and women had long been carrying out the duties of citizenship - even though they continued to face discrimination and violence. Holly Pinheiro: Many Americans of all races don't have a clear understanding prior to the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act, of what the definition of a citizen is. In many cases, even when they use the term, it's going to be more at the state level. Unfortunately, there are many, numerous States that will add in the male, and also white layer, to those state policies that will limit citizenship to white men, and usually that's native born. Though there were some places, like in New York, where they would have what was known as the Property Qualification law. So, a Black man who had over $250 in property in theory could vote, but that was such a small proportion of the population, which also brings in a layer of financial issues. What many scholars, and I would say I'm in that conversation, are doing, is saying Black men are citizens, and actually in Pennsylvania, they're paying state taxes, they're paying city taxes, and I always bring this up to my students because we talk about unpacking, "What is a citizen?" Paying your taxes essentially is a component of that, which most people don't like. So, in many ways, Black Pennsylvanians are already doing this element. Once they enlist in the war and sign a contract with the United States government and then put on the uniform and serve, they're also doing the duty of a citizen. So, it's like even before they go and get these later federal policies, they're doing what a citizen is supposed to do, but due to racial discrimination, it's being barred from them. Eleanor Mahoney: What makes someone a citizen? As Dr. Pinheiro’s research demonstrates, the answer isn’t as straightforward as we might think. Even though they could not vote, Black women asserted their citizenship in many ways before and after the Civil War. They paid taxes, brought lawsuits, formed clubs, and ran mutual aid societies. In New York City, for example, the abolitionist Julia Williams Garnet started the Ladies’ Committee of New York to support the USCT during the Civil War. Her choice of the name “Ladies’ Committee” was deliberate. The distinction of being a “lady” was almost always reserved for upper-class white women. By using that term, Black women, like Williams Garnet, were demanding recognition for their contributions to social welfare during wartime. Yet, despite their achievements, organizations like the Ladies Committee of New York struggled for respect within a system that devalued the labor of Black women, while celebrating white women for the same work. Dr. Pinheiro explains more: Holly Pinheiro: So, for example, in New York state, the Union League Club, the women connected to that organization, which still exists by the way, the wives who were all white and daughters and all that, they will raise the money and actually present to the 20th United States Colored Infantry, their regimental flag, which happened seven months after the New York city draft riots, which is depicted in, Gangs in New York, but they are not allowed to speak. It's actually going to be only the president of Columbia College, who is going to speak on their behalf. That is really, there's so much to unpack there, but actually in Pennsylvania, at least in the case of one or two of the regiments, Black women are going to be the ones who raised the money and are there to support the bestowing of this flag, well, actually there was two, to the regiment. To me, that's just really interesting because it's another example of Black women doing what white women are doing during the Civil War era. The soldiers and the colonels, for example, they look at these flags as symbols of statehood, of national patriotism, of the sacrifices and support of the home front. So, one could make an argument that these flags represent Black and white women's demands and continued support for the war, but also a call to their citizenship to be recognized. Many of the demands that these women are going to make with the suffrage movement, and then, once they have the right to vote, and then obviously the racial discrimination layer that will come with it, Black women, white women, women of all colors, are going to have what we call cultural citizenship elements, and they're going to look to the societal changes in many cases directly connected to major conflicts, and I mean like military. There is, without question, connections. I think, maybe again, someone in a future project doing a research study that looks at Spanish-American Cuban Filipino War, or even World War One, and the influence that it might have had on the suffrage movement. I would guess that there are some connections there, because I do see it in the Civil War era and post era. Eleanor Mahoney: One-way Black women challenged their treatment during the civil war was through the legal system. They filed lawsuits to desegregate Philadelphia streetcars in the 1860s; historian Judith Giesberg writes about their activism in a book called Army at Home. Many of the women used public transit to travel to and from Camp William Penn, and the streetcars became a vital link to the military regiments stationed in the city. By going to court, Dr. Pinheiro says, Black women asserted their place in society and fashioned their own definitions of citizenship. Holly Pinheiro: Black women are going to bring up many civil suits, essentially where they're agitating for the desegregation of streetcars in Philadelphia. And most of these women will have ties or are supporting the USCT regiments that are training. So, they're actually going to use, and that's a great connection too is, the citizenship that Black men are demonstrating as soldiers, to also with these legal cases in which they're supporting Black men's national sacrifices. So, even them bringing up a case and multiple suits, they're also doing something that should be limited to a citizen of the state. So, Black women are finding very inventive and important ways to push the conversation of, "What does it mean to be a citizen, and what does it mean to be a lady," because I think that's also important is the race and gender components of that since many in Northern society are not going to look at what these Black women are doing as respectable, even though it's critical to the war effort. Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, I believe calls it like, this Antebellum and warts Civil War era sit-ins. Right? So, we can help honestly push this conversation even earlier, if we talk about the long Civil Rights era. Like what they're doing in many ways does connect to what individuals much later will do. Eleanor Mahoney: This Civil War era activism and service carried directly into the demands for voting rights that Black men and women would make after the war. Dr. Pinheiro says Black Americans saw their wartime contributions as an investment in their citizenship, and they expected this sacrifice to be recognized.

  Holly Pinheiro: One could argue that, without the service, the support of the families that many of the calls that are going to be made for suffrage rights, and the demands to equalized society, they're connected, right? For example, the Iowa 60th, a United States Colored Infantry, those Black soldiers will make demands for the right to vote because of their service. There are many, what are called colored conventions, they're going to happen immediately after the Civil War nationwide. There's actually an edited volume on that, in which they're going to say, "We as Black men," and then it will evolve to include Black women, all have earned this right because of the Civil War and what these individuals have sacrificed. Eleanor Mahoney: When it comes to the story of voting rights, there is no guarantee that access to the ballot will expand over time. In the decades before the Civil War, for example, many state legislatures in the North and West of the United States repealed laws that had granted suffrage to African American men. In Pennsylvania, for example, a new state constitution ratified in the 1830s, restricted the franchise to white free men only - a change that African Americans in the state vigorously protested. As soon as they could, tens of thousands of Black men enlisted in the Union Army, with the support of their family members. By serving in the USCT, and by aiding soldiers at sites like Camp William Penn in Philadelphia, Black men and women made a powerful claim to full citizenship through their sacrifice, rebutting the racism that animated laws like the Pennsylvania constitution. The revolution of Reconstruction would, in fact, witness a tremendous expansion in the franchise, but the gains would be short-lived. Across the county, white Americans could take violent action to curtail these newly won civil and political rights, with Black codes, vigilantism, and Jim Crow all serving to restrict voting once again. In the next episode, we’ll hear about an African American woman, Mary Church Terrell, who was born during the Civil War but grew up in a different world than the women of Camp William Penn. She fought for racial justice and for women’s rights around the world and challenged the white-led hierarchy of the women’s suffrage movement. Ballot Blocked is produced and hosted by me, Eleanor Mahoney. Dr. Sylvea Hollis conducted research and interviews and helped plan this podcast. Drew Himmelstein is our producer and editor. Our music is by Podington Bear. This project was made possible through the National Park Service in part through a grant from the National Park Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Credits

Ballot Blocked is produced and hosted by Dr. Eleanor Mahoney. Dr. Sylvea Hollis conducted research and interviews and helped plan this podcast. Drew Himmelstein is the producer and editor. Music is by Podington Bear. This project was made possible through the National Park Service in part through a grant from the National Park Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.