Their spirits are marching again. Spirits harkening back to May 28 ,1863 when Col. Robert Gould Shaw, led the all-Black Massachusetts 54th Regiment to join the Union army in the Civil War. Their historic march down Beacon Street past the State House was captured by American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens.The sculpture, sited on Beacon Street at the edge of the Boston Common, honored one of the first African American regiments to fight for the Union army.
And this Memorial Day weekend, after months of critical restoration, there will be another special unveiling of the famous work — this treasured Boston monument once again restored to its former glory courtesy of The Partnership to Renew the Shaw 54th Regiment Memorial.
Just a little over two months after the 54th’s triumphant march down Beacon Street, Shaw was dead and nearly half of the 600-member regiment were killed or missing in the brutal battle at South Carolina’s Fort Wagner. Some were injured and captured — the valor and the ultimate sacrifice of the men of the 54th, as well as other Black Union soldiers, would inspire the first Memorial Day after the war. It was a remembrance not designed by the military or the leaders of the then patched together union of states, but by the formerly enslaved for whose freedom they fought.
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