The Hartford Courant

Injecting Race Into The Revolutionary War

By KEN BYRON
Courant Staff Writer

June 4 2002

Maurice Barboza has spent the past 17 years taking up the cause of Cuff Ackley and other long-overlooked veterans of the nation's war for independence.

Ackley enlisted in a Connecticut unit that fought in the Revolutionary War. Nothing in his records indicates he was an exceptional soldier, but Ackley was among the several thousand black Patriots who took up arms against the Redcoats - and Barboza says that is important.

The role of blacks in the Revolutionary War is well established. But what most concerns Barboza, who grew up in Plainville, is that many are not recognized as black. That robs the veterans and their descendants of their due recognition and the country of its true history, he says.

Since 1984, Barboza and his aunt, Lena Ferguson, have been disputing the issue with one of the most prestigious historic institutions in the country - the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution. The DAR undertook a project to identify all black Revolutionary War soldiers, but Barboza says their work was sloppy and incomplete. He and his aunt are pressing their case.

"I want it publicized that there were black soldiers in the Revolutionary War; it's very important to me," Ferguson said. "I want people to know that black people fought for this country at the very beginning."

Standoff

Barboza is a corporate marketing and communications consultant based in Washington, D.C. At least, that's his day job. He has been consumed in recent years with combing sometimes obscure records for evidence of black soldiers the DAR overlooked and prodding the society to do more. After years of haggling, the Daughters and Barboza are deadlocked over whether to add names to the list.

Black and white Revolutionary War soldiers fought for the same ends, but the ideals that white men such as Patrick Henry, Tom Paine and Thomas Jefferson articulated had particular attraction for blacks, some of whom were slaves motivated not only by the patriots' fight for liberty, but also by the promise of freedom from their own bondage.

Consequently, Barboza says, those soldiers should not be mistaken as white. At the same time, he said, revealing blacks' full contribution to the country's birth can only make the nation a better place for all.

"A belief in freedom and liberty is what unites us as Americans, and blacks were fighting for that at the very beginning," Barboza said. "I want people to realize that blacks and whites were fighting for that concept. Knowing that will make us better citizens."

The black veterans identification project came out of a settlement between the DAR and Ferguson. At Barboza's suggestion, Ferguson applied to join the society in 1980. She sought membership as a way of honoring her mother, who was descended from Revolutionary War veteran Jonah Gay of Maine, whose descendents later moved to Plainville. The DAR had few black members at that time, and Ferguson said she also wanted to use her candidacy to open the society up to minorities.

Although she had the ancestry and documentation to support her application, the society put off accepting Ferguson for a couple of years. Ferguson and Barboza, who are both black, contend the DAR discriminated against her. After Ferguson threatened to sue, the organization agreed in 1984 to let her join and to start the identification project, which Barboza and Ferguson had proposed.

The project, Ferguson said, was meant to serve a dual purpose - to make minorities aware they have ancestors who fought in the war and are eligible to join the DAR; and to increase the public's awareness of the role black soldiers played in the war.

The study sought to look at the approximately 150,000 people whom the DAR has determined fought or played some other active role in the Revolutionary War and identify those who were black or of some African ancestry, DAR spokeswoman April Watkins said.

The effort, Watkins said, was hindered by the spotty records kept by officials of that time.

"We relied on records from the Colonial period, and the people who kept those records didn't document a lot of things," she said.

Checking the sources

The DAR published a series of books listing black soldiers from each state and sent them to Ferguson and Barboza as each became available.

"Lena and I would look at these books and we both thought they were thin, that there had to be more people than what they were listing," Barboza said. "I got suspicious and started looking for ways of testing their work."

He used a number of sources. Among the most crucial was the 17-volume "Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War," which Barboza found while researching his own genealogy. As he was working, an acquaintance sent him a copy of "Negro Soldiers and Sailors," a 127-page volume compiled in 1936 by an amateur historian from Massachusetts.

The officials who raised the units that fought in the war did not always record the race of the men they signed up, or if they did, the information is often unclear. For researchers, cross-checking names between various sources is essential.

An important source for checking questionable names were census records from 1790 and 1800, Barboza said. Those records often left little doubt about a person's race, he said. Richard Brown, a history professor at the University of Connecticut, said he found that a veteran he was studying was black only by checking the 1790 census.

Barboza said the DAR failed to take such elementary steps. An example of the DAR's poor work, Barboza says, was the failure to identify Cesar Upton of Massachusetts as black. Upton's military record does not indicate his race, but Barboza said he consulted the 1790 census and found Upton was listed as being black.

Upton's first name also should have tipped off DAR staff to take a closer look, Barboza said. The first name "Cesar" was seldom given to white people during the 1700s, but was a common name for blacks.

"I found more than 500 additional people who should be on the list and I'm just one person and I based most of my research on records from Massachusetts," Barboza said. "So there could be hundreds or even thousands more soldiers out there who have not been classified as black."

Brown, the history professor, said he was unaware of the DAR's work and that such work would be difficult.

"Doing that would be a challenge and you wouldn't get everybody," Brown said. Officials who kept track of who signed up to fight often did not bother to record a soldier's race. Listing the soldier's civilian occupation was far more common.

"The record-keeping was done locally and it was very idiosyncratic," Brown said.

The DAR said the project is complete. Barboza said it's far from finished.

"The DAR tried to scuttle this project from the very beginning," he said. "They treated it as though they didn't care."

Barboza and Ferguson appear to be at a standstill with the DAR. He said he requested a meeting during the winter with DAR staff to discuss the names of black war veterans left off the list. The DAR refused to meet with him, Barboza said.

Although the DAR considers the identification project complete, members and staff still are committed to minority involvement, Watkins said.

"Part of our intent when we reached the agreement with Lena Ferguson was to reach out to minorities who potentially could join the DAR, and that is not closed," she said. "But with the identification project, we feel that issue is closed."

Nevertheless, she said the DAR is willing to look at the names Barboza is proposing.

Barboza said he will not provide that list unless the DAR promises to take certain steps. Those include adding names to the list of black soldiers, including those classified as "brown."

 

Copyright 2002, Hartford Courant