This Monument to Colored Union Soldiers is on the corner of King St & Hyde Park St across from the entrance to Cedarwood Cemetery.
Overall View
Side 1
Side 2
Civil War Trails Plaque
Transcription of Plaque:
A Rare Monument
In Memory of the Colored Union Soldiers
News of the bombardment of Fort Sumter inspired many African American men to enlist in the US
armed forces, but federal law prohibited their service. Frederick Douglass and other black
leaders urged changes to allow black enlistments. By mid-1862, as the number of white volunteers
diminshed, the needs of the US Army grew, and the announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation
became imminent, more voices called for black recruitment. The Proclamation, issued on January
1, 1863, formally authorized African American military service. By the end of the war, about
180,000 blacks - including some from Perquimans County - had borne arms in the US Army (almost
10 percent of total enlistments) and about 19,000 had served in the US Navy.
To remember the county's African America Union soldiers, women of the black community, many of
them wives and widows of those men, erected one of the few such monuments in the nation on
Academy Green in 1910. Coordinated by First Baptist Church and the United Daughters of Union
Veterans, the monument is inscribed "In Memory of the Colored Union Soldiers Who Fought in the
War of 1861-1865." Academy Green was the location of the county's first black school, library,
and church (present-day First Baptist Church), which freedmen formed in a bush shelter in 1866.
The congregation later built a church across the street.