My own great great grandfather, John Curtis Gay, a white man from Maine, gave his life for the cause of freedom during the Civil War when he was gunned down at Cold Harbor, Virginia. But for the photograph he took days before, and which was passed down to me, there would be no Black Revolutionary War Patriots Memorial. That was the clue that piqued my curiosity and that brought me up the steps to this sacred place this evening.

 

 

 

The U.S. Archives is a really wonderful place. It is like an old attic where time sometimes bows to curiosity and persistence. I found that curiosity can hold you like a ghost's embrace until you have found what you didn't know you were searching for. The "old attic" yielded my great great grandfather's name, John Curtis Gay, and a military record thick with information. I was embraced! The search became an obsession. Time didn't matter.

I spent months scanning miles of microfilm and hundreds of pages of yellowed records. I had finally identified the places where four generations of my white ancestors, and three generations of my black ancestors, had lived. In search of the smallest bits of information, I visited museums, libraries and town halls, from Maine to Virginia.

Eventually, I traced my white ancestors to the American Revolution and to colonial America of the 1630s.

-- Maurice A. Barboza

 

strike Black Revolutionary War Patriots Foundation and insert instead, National Mall Liberty Fund D.C.