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  • Episode 52: Joe and The Alamo – Little Known Stories

    Episode 52: Joe and The Alamo – Little Known Stories
    2026/07/13
    Joe and The Alamo – Little Known Stories The Last Man Standing Joe the Battle of The Alamo, and the testimony that became history There were many stories on the wagon trail. To understand what Joe did, you first have to understand what he wasn’t supposed to do at all. He wasn’t a soldier. Nobody swore him in. Nobody handed him a rank. He was, in the eyes of the law and in the eyes of the man who owned him, property, a twenty-year-old enslaved man named Joe, body servant to a twenty-six-year-old lieutenant colonel named William Barret Travis. Joe pressed his master’s clothes. Saddled his horse. Drove his carriage into town. That was the job. That was supposed to be the whole of his story.Here on Quarter Miles Travel – Well say his name and we tell his story. In December of 1835, Travis was ordered to the Texas frontier, to a small town built around a crumbling Spanish mission, San Antonio de Béxar. He brought Joe with him. Not as a companion. As equipment – as property. They arrived on February 5th, 1836. Within three weeks, everything about that place would become permanent carved into American memory for two hundred years. The mission was called the Alamo. On February 23rd, Mexican forces under General Antonio López de Santa Anna poured into San Antonio far faster than the Texans expected. Santa Anna raised a blood-red flag over the bell tower of San Fernando Church, a message with only one meaning: no mercy, no quarter, no surrender terms. Travis answered with a single cannon shot. For the next thirteen days, roughly two hundred men, Travis, Jim Bowie, Davy Crockett, and the volunteers who’d gathered behind the Alamo’s crumbling walls, held out against a force that outnumbered them many times over. And for thirteen days, Joe was there too.He didn’t get a say in whether to stay and fight or to run. He shared every hour of it anyway, the cold, the hunger, the exhaustion, the slow realization that the reinforcements everyone hoped for weren’t coming. Historians will tell you plainly: an enslaved man’s presence during a siege like this wasn’t unusual for the era. What’s unusual, what’s remarkable is that we know what Joe experienced at all. Because almost nobody in that position ever got to speak afterward. Joe did. Before dawn on March 6th, 1836, the assault came. By Joe’s own later account, he was asleep in the same room as Travis when the alarm went up. Travis grabbed his rifle and his sword. He shouted for Joe to follow him. They ran together to the north wall. Travis called out to his men, one last order to stand and fight. He fired his weapon. Almost in the same instant, he was shot and fell inside the compound. Joe watched his master go down. And then he did the only thing that gave him any chance at all, he pulled back into one of the interior buildings and kept firing from cover as the walls came apart around him. The battle by this point wasn’t a battle in any organized sense anymore. It was hand to hand. Rifle butts, knives, bayonets. Men fighting for their own lives with whatever was in their hands. When Mexican soldiers finally broke all the way through, they moved building to building. And they called out, demanding that any Black men inside reveal themselves. Joe stepped out. Even so, in the chaos, a soldier struck him with a pistol and drove a bayonet toward him before a Mexican officer intervened and stopped it. He was one of only a small handful of people left alive inside those walls.The only adult male defender to survive. Joe was taken into Béxar as a captive. He watched a formal review of the Mexican army, a display, really, meant to communicate total victory. And then he was brought before Santa Anna himself. Joe apparently spoke some Spanish. So Santa Anna questioned him directly, about the size of the Texan forces, about Sam Houston’s army, about what was left to stand between the Mexican military and the rest of Texas. He was also asked to help identify the bodies of Travis and Bowie among the Alamo’s dead. Then, for reasons historians still debate, he was released. Think about the position he was in. A prisoner. Interrogated by the general who’d just ordered the deaths of everyone he’d spent thirteen days beside. No protection. No guarantee that walking out of that room meant walking out alive. And somehow, it was Joe, not a Texan officer, not a diplomat, who became one of the only living sources of truth about what had actually happened inside the Alamo. Joe made his way to Gonzales, traveling alongside Susanna Dickinson wife of a fallen Alamo defender, and her infant daughter. Together they delivered the news to Sam Houston and the gathering Texan forces there: the Alamo had fallen. Everyone inside was dead. It was the first confirmation Texas had. Houston, realizing Santa Anna’s army was still advancing, ordered Gonzales burned and its people evacuated east, the beginning of what Texans still call the Runaway Scrape. ...
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    17 分
  • American Cowboys: The Real Story

    American Cowboys: The Real Story
    2026/07/11
    American Cowboys: The Real Story SEGMENT ONE: THE AMERICAN COWBOY Hello, hello and welcome aboard Travel with Annita. I am so glad you’re riding with me today — because today we are going somewhere I have wanted to take you for a long time. We are going West. Not just geographically west, but historically west. We are going to the heart of one of the most powerful, most misunderstood, and most genuinely American stories ever told. We are talking about the American cowboy. Now, when I say “cowboy,” I want you to set aside for a moment everything Hollywood ever showed you. Set aside John Wayne. Set aside the rhinestone shirts and the singing cowboy. Set aside the lone white man on a white horse riding into the sunset. Because the real story — the actual, documented, fascinating history of the American cowboy — is so much bigger, so much richer, and so much more diverse than any movie ever captured. And today, we are going to tell it right. Let’s start at the very beginning — and I mean the very beginning. Before there was ever an American cowboy, there was a vaquero. Say that word with me — vaquero. It comes from the Spanish word vaca, meaning cow, and it described a skilled horseman who managed cattle across the open range. The vaqueros were Mexican. They were indigenous. They were mestizo — a mix of Spanish and Native ancestry — and they were doing this work in Texas, in California, in what would become the American Southwest, a full century before the famous cattle drives that most of us associate with cowboy history even began. Think about that for a moment. A century before. When the Spanish established missions in Texas in the early 1700s, they weren’t just building churches — they were building ranching operations. By 1721, there were nearly 5,000 head of cattle in the San Antonio River Valley alone, tended by vaqueros who had developed their craft into something extraordinary. By the early 1800s, California missions were operating herds that averaged 40,000 cattle each. This was an enormous, sophisticated cattle industry — and it was entirely run by people whose names Hollywood never put on a movie poster. And here is something important: every single tool we associate with the American cowboy came directly from the vaquero. The saddle with the raised horn for roping — Mexican. The lasso — that’s the vaquero’s reata. The chaps protecting a rider’s legs — from the Spanish chaparajos. The corral, the rodeo, the bronco, the rancho — all Spanish words, adopted wholesale by Anglo settlers who learned this craft by watching, by working alongside, and eventually by hiring the people who had been doing it for generations. By the 1870s, those tools and those techniques had become so common across Texas that everyone called them simply “American” — and the vaqueros who invented them got quietly written out of the story. Now. The moment that changed everything — that turned the cowboy from a regional ranch worker into a genuine American icon — was the Civil War. And specifically, what happened right after it. When Confederate Texas men left to fight, the people left behind tended those ranching operations. They were largely enslaved African Americans and vaqueros from Mexico. They kept those ranches going. And when the war ended, when emancipation came, those ranches sat in the middle of an astonishing situation: millions of longhorn cattle had roamed wild across Texas during the war years, largely unbranded and unclaimed. At the same time, the expanding railroad network was pushing north into Kansas and Missouri, and the cities of the North and East were desperately hungry for beef. So you had cattle. You had markets. And you had a distance of five hundred miles or more between them. And the solution — the human solution — was the cowboy. Between 1865 and roughly 1895, an estimated ten million Texas longhorns were driven north along famous routes like the Chisholm Trail, the Goodnight-Loving Trail, and the Western Trail. These cattle drives became the defining image of the American West. A trail crew typically included a trail boss, eight to twelve cowboys, a cook — who was arguably the most important person on the entire drive — and a wrangler managing the extra horses. They covered ten to fifteen miles a day. They crossed rivers with thousands of panicking cattle. They rode through lightning storms with no shelter. They worked in dust so thick you couldn’t see the rider in front of you. It was hard, physical, unglamorous work — and it built the cattle industry that fed a nation. But here is the most important thing to understand about that era: those trail crews were not the all-white crews Hollywood showed you. They were Mexican vaqueros. They were Native American riders, particularly through Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma — men who knew that land better than any trail boss on earth. They were formerly enslaved Black men who ...
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    41 分
  • Episode 49: American Revolution Patriots In The Shadows

    Episode 49: American Revolution Patriots In The Shadows
    2026/07/03
    American Revolution Patriots In The Shadows Photo courtesy of U.S. Mint July 10th, 1777. Middle of the night. A small rowboat slips through British-controlled waters off the coast of Rhode Island. Forty men are packed into a handful of boats, oars wrapped in cloth to muffle the sound. Their target: a British general, asleep in a farmhouse a mile inland from his own troops. They land. They creep to the door. And when it doesn’t open fast enough, a man named Jack Sisson puts his own head down and rams it through. No shots fired. No alarm raised. British General Richard Prescott is dragged out of bed in his nightshirt and rowed back across enemy lines as a prisoner of war. Jack Sisson was an enslaved man from Rhode Island. And if you’ve never heard his name before; you’re not alone. Because for two hundred and fifty years, stories like his have been sitting in pension files and church records and old muster rolls, waiting for someone to go looking. I’m Annita Thomas, and this is Patriots in the Shadows, the story of the thousands of Black soldiers, sailors, spies, and guerrilla fighters who fought in the American Revolution. On both sides. In every colony. And in almost every major battle you learned about in school, even if nobody mentioned they were there. Let’s get into it. Before we even get to the war itself, we have to go back five years earlier to March 5th, 1770. Boston. A crowd is gathered outside the Custom House, taunting a group of British soldiers. Tensions have been simmering for months. And then, someone gives the order or maybe no one does, historians still argue about it, and the soldiers open fire into the crowd. The first man to die is Crispus Attucks. A dockworker, part African, part Native American, and by most accounts, right at the front of that crowd. He becomes the first casualty of what history will call the Boston Massacre, five years before a single shot of the actual war is fired. Fast forward to April 19th, 1775. Lexington Green. The war has officially begun. Among the colonial militia standing on that field is a man named Prince Estabrook, enslaved but permitted to serve. When the British volley hits the line, Estabrook goes down wounded. One of the very first men, of any race, hurt in the Revolutionary War. There were other Black militiamen at Concord that same day. We don’t have most of their names. That’s going to be a theme in this episode, and it’s worth sitting with for a second. The men who are remembered are often remembered by accident: a wound, a pension claim, an officer who happened to write something down. For every Crispus Attucks, there were probably a dozen men whose entire service is just… gone. Two months after Lexington, you get Bunker Hill, one of the bloodiest battles of the entire war. And this is where the historical record actually gets a little better, because so many officers on both sides wrote detailed accounts afterward. At least three dozen Black soldiers fought at Bunker Hill. Three dozen. Let that sink in for a second, next time someone shows you a painting of that battle with an all-white cast. Peter Salem, a man who’d been freed by his enslaver specifically so he could enlist, is credited with firing the shot that killed British Major John Pitcairn. This is the same officer who, weeks earlier at Lexington, had given the order to fire on the militia. Salem didn’t stop there either. he went on to fight at Saratoga and Monmouth. Then there’s Salem Poor. Also formerly enslaved. Poor fought so effectively at Bunker Hill, he’s credited with killing a British lieutenant colonel. that fourteen American officers, after the battle, signed a joint petition to the Massachusetts legislature. Fourteen officers, vouching for one soldier. They called him, and I’m going to read this because it’s worth hearing exactly as written: “a brave and gallant soldier” who “behaved like an experienced officer.” That document still exists. It’s one of the only formal, individual battlefield commendations we have for a Black soldier in the entire war. And there’s Barzillai Lew, six-foot-tall free Black cooper from Massachusetts, who served as a fifer and drummer. Story goes, during the actual fighting, Lew kept morale up by playing “Yankee Doodle” on his fife while the battle raged around him. He’d go on to serve at Fort Ticonderoga and was present at Saratoga when British General Burgoyne surrendered. His powder horn is still sitting in a museum in Chicago today. And here’s a fun fact, in 1943, Duke Ellington wrote a piece of music in his honor, after learning his story from his own high school teacher. Cuff Whittemore fought so bravely that day, he was allowed to keep a sword he’d captured off a British officer. Titus Coburn, Alexander Ames, Blaney Grusha, Cato Howe, Seymour Burr, all there too. All in the fight. Most of them known to us today only because somebody, somewhere, wrote their name down on a piece...
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    26 分
  • Destination: America 250 What are we celebrating

    Destination: America 250 What are we celebrating
    2026/06/27
    Destination: America 250 What are we celebrating America’s 250th: Three Events, One Story Three Dates, One Nation, and Why the Difference Matters Welcome to Travel with Annita. I’m so glad you’re here with me today, because we’re starting something a little different, a deep look at America’s 250th anniversary, what we’re actually celebrating, and why getting the story right matters more than you might think. Here’s where this segment came from. Over the past while, I’ve had listeners ask me, more than once, and I mean that with real warmth and no judgment at all, whether the Revolutionary War and the Civil War were the same event. One listener asked if the Declaration of Independence was signed to end slavery. Another asked if George Washington fought against the Confederacy. I want to be really clear about something before we go any further: there is absolutely nothing embarrassing about these questions. American history, especially when you didn’t grow up steeped in it or it’s been a while since school, can blur together. We’ve got founding fathers and generals and documents and wars all crowded into the same few centuries, and honestly, our own history hasn’t always done a great job of teaching it in a way that sticks. So today, we’re untangling it together, gently, clearly, and with the respect this story deserves. So let’s lay out the three big events we’re going to be living with throughout this show. First: the Declaration of Independence. Adopted July 4, 1776. This is the moment the American colonies formally declared they were no longer subjects of the British Crown, a political and philosophical announcement, made in writing, asserting that they intended to become a free and independent nation. Second: the Revolutionary War. Now here’s the first surprise for a lot of folks, the war actually started before the Declaration, back in April 1775, at Lexington and Concord. The fighting had already been going on for over a year by the time Congress formally declared independence. The war then continued for eight more years, finally ending with the Treaty of Paris in 1783. Third: the Civil War, and this one happened a full 78 years after the Declaration, and 80 years after the Revolution began. It started in 1861 and ended in 1865. This was Americans fighting Americans, over whether the union would survive and whether slavery would continue to exist in this country. Now, why does the order and the spacing here matter so much? Because each of these events answers a completely different question. The Declaration answers the question: can a people declare themselves free, and define what they believe a government owes its citizens? The Revolutionary War answers the question: will that declared freedom actually be won and defended? And the Civil War answers a question the founding generation left unresolved, does “all men are created equal” actually mean what it says, for everyone, or just for some? That’s the heart of it. The Declaration made a promise. The Revolution fought to secure the right to make good on that promise. And the Civil War, eight decades later, was the price the nation paid for not having kept that promise the first time around. Why July 4, 1776 and Why That Date Is More Layered Than It Looks This year, 2026, is the Semiquincentennial, the 250th anniversary, and it’s anchored specifically to the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776. Not the start of the war. Not the end of the war. The moment America declared, in writing, what it intended to become. But here’s something worth knowing, because it surprises almost everyone the first time they hear it: July 4th isn’t actually the date the colonies voted for independence, and it isn’t the date most signers actually signed the document either. Congress voted to approve independence on July 2, 1776. Two days later, on July 4th, Congress formally adopted the final edited text of the Declaration, that’s the date that’s printed on the document, and that’s the date we celebrate. But the actual signing of the parchment copy by most delegates didn’t happen until August 2, 1776, nearly a full month later, and a few signatures weren’t added until early the following year. So when we say America turns 250 on July 4, 2026, we’re really celebrating the day Congress agreed on the wording of a promise, not the vote, and not the signing. It’s a small distinction, but I think it’s a beautiful one, because it means we’re celebrating the moment the *idea itself* became official, independent of the political vote that came before it, and independent of the individual men who later put their names to it one by one over the following months. And here’s one more date worth knowing: John Adams himself believed history would remember July 2nd, the day of the actual vote, as America’s true day of independence, not July 4th. He even refused for years to attend July 4th celebrations on ...
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    41 分
  • Episode 48: Juliette Gordon Low – The Girl Scouts

    Episode 48: Juliette Gordon Low – The Girl Scouts
    2026/06/16
    Photo courtesy – U.S. Mint Episode 48: Juliette Gordon Low – The Girl Scouts Juliette Gordon Low & the Girl Scouts From 18 Girls in Savannah to a Global Movement Hello, hello, hello—and welcome to another journey through history. Today we’re traveling to Savannah, a beautiful Southern city known for its moss-draped oak trees, historic squares, and charming architecture. But Savannah is also the birthplace of a movement that changed the lives of millions of girls around the world. The story begins with a determined woman named Juliette Gordon Low—known affectionately to friends and family as “Daisy.” And now, more than a century later, her legacy is being honored on the Juliette Gordon Low Quarter, part of the American Women Quarters Program issued by the United States Mint. She was a Woman Ahead of Her Time To understand Juliette Gordon Low, we need to step back to the early 1900s. In those days, opportunities for women and girls were limited. Women could not vote yet. Social expectations were strict. Girls were often taught to be quiet, polite, and prepared for traditional roles. But Juliette Gordon Low believed girls deserved something very different. She believed they should be curious, adventurous, independent, and confident. And she believed they should learn skills that would help them make a difference in the world. In 1911, while traveling in England, Juliette Gordon Low met a man named Robert Baden-Powell. He had founded the Boy Scouts, a movement designed to teach boys outdoor skills, leadership, and service. The idea sparked something in Juliette Gordon Low immediately.She saw how powerful this type of program could be—but she believed girls deserved the same opportunities. So she returned home to Savannah with a bold plan. On March 12, 1912, Juliette Gordon Low gathered 18 girls in Savannah. Those girls became the very first troop of what would become the Girl Scouts of the USA. At the time, the organization was first called Girl Guides, modeled after a similar group in Britain. But the name soon changed to Girl Scouts. Those first meetings focused on things that were unusual for girls at the time: hikingcampingfirst aidleadershipcommunity service And perhaps most importantly—confidence. Juliette Gordon Low encouraged girls to believe they could do anything. What started with just 18 girls in Savannah quickly began to grow. Girls across the country were drawn to the idea of adventure and service. They learned to: build campfiresnavigate outdoorswork together in teamsserve their communities These were skills that prepared girls not just for childhood—but for life. The movement spread quickly. In the 1920s, Girl Scout troops began appearing beyond the United States. Troops formed in places like: ChinaSyriaMexico One of the earliest Native American Girl Scout troops formed on the **Onondaga Nation Reservation in New York in 1921. Mexican American girls formed a troop in Houston in 1922. By 1925, a troop was registered in Shanghai, showing just how quickly the movement had grown. What Juliette Gordon Low started in Savannah had become international. When the Great Depression struck in the 1930s, Girl Scouts stepped forward to help. Troops collected: foodclothingsupplies for families in need They also worked to welcome immigrants into their communities. The Girl Scouts even printed information about their organization in several languages, including: YiddishItalianPolish This helped new immigrant families understand and join the movement. Inclusiveness became one of the organization’s core values. During World War II, Girl Scouts once again stepped forward to serve. Troops across the country participated in national war efforts. Girls collected: scrap metalcooking fatsclothing They also planted Victory Gardens to help support food supplies. Some troops even operated bicycle courier services, delivering important messages and supplies. Girl Scouts also organized Defense Institutes, where women learned emergency skills and ways to help children remain calm during air raids. Even Japanese American girls held in wartime internment camps in Utah and California formed Girl Scout troops—demonstrating the power of community even during difficult times. The spirit of service continued after the war. During the Korean War, Girl Scouts assembled “Kits for Korea,” packages filled with supplies for Korean civilians. The organization also continued pushing for equality and inclusion. By the early 1950s, progress toward racial integration was already happening within Girl Scouts—even in the segregated South. In the 1960s, Girl Scouts became increasingly active in conversations about equality and social change. The organization held Speak Out conferences across the country where girls could discuss issues of race and justice. A national program called ACTION 70 encouraged girls to work toward overcoming prejudice and building stronger relationships among communities. Girl Scouts...
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    12 分
  • Episode 47: Ona Judge – The Courage of Freedom

    Episode 47: Ona Judge – The Courage of Freedom
    2026/06/09
    Ona Judge was a woman of courage. She stood strong for her freedom from the most prestigious American family - George and Martha Washington. She escaped and remained free.
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    37 分
  • Episode 46: The Liberty Tree Yesterday and Today

    Episode 46: The Liberty Tree Yesterday and Today
    2026/05/25
    The Liberty Tree Yesterday and Today Long before America became a nation… before there was a Declaration of Independence… before there were fireworks, parades, or even the United States itself… there was a tree. There was The Liberty Tree. Its branches stretched over the streets of Boston like open arms gathering together ordinary people with extraordinary courage. Beneath that tree, colonists whispered dangerous ideas. They gathered in fear, in frustration, and eventually in hope. Hope that freedom could belong not only to kings and wealthy men, but to common people willing to stand together and demand it. The Liberty Tree was more than wood and leaves rooted in the soil of colonial America. To the colonists, it became a living symbol of resistance, unity, and the belief that their voices mattered. Under its shade, the Sons of Liberty organized protests against British rule. Effigies were hung from its branches. Speeches stirred the hearts of the people. Plans were made that would help ignite a revolution. But emotionally, the Liberty Tree represented something even deeper. It reminded people they were not alone. For dock workers, craftsmen, merchants, laborers, free Black colonists, and even the enslaved who heard whispers of liberty carried through Boston’s streets, the tree became a symbol of possibility. A place where courage grew. A place where the idea of freedom took root long before the nation itself did. And even after British soldiers cut the tree down in 1775, they could not destroy what it had already inspired. Because the Liberty Tree had become more than a place. It had become an idea. Today, nearly 250 years later, that same spirit still speaks to us. The belief that communities matter. That ordinary voices can shape history. That liberty requires courage, sacrifice, and people willing to stand together beneath the weight of uncertain times. On this episode of Quarter Miles Travel, we travel back to the roots of the American Revolution to uncover the story of the Liberty Tree… the tree that helped grow a nation. The Liberty Tree came to represent the values that would eventually shape the soul of a nation: freedom, unity, courage, civic responsibility, resistance to injustice, and the belief that ordinary people have the power to shape their own future. Beneath its branches, colonists discovered that liberty was not simply an idea spoken by politicians or written in documents—it was something living, something worth protecting and fighting for together. The tree became a gathering place where voices joined in common purpose, where communities stood against oppression, and where hope grew stronger than fear. Its symbolism inspired a nation to believe that freedom belonged not to a king, but to the people. That government should answer to its citizens. That protest could become patriotism. And that even in uncertain times, unity and courage could grow deep enough to change the course of history. Though the original tree was cut down, the values it represented continued to spread across the colonies like roots beneath the soil—eventually giving rise to the birth of the United States itself. Yes — there were tensions, contradictions, and sometimes open conflict between Black and white colonists during the years leading up to the American Revolution, especially in slaveholding colonies. The revolutionary era was filled with a painful irony: White colonists were demanding liberty from Britain while many continued denying liberty to enslaved Africans. African Americans recognized that contradiction immediately. Some Black people supported the patriot movement and hoped the Revolution would eventually lead to freedom and equality. Others deeply distrusted white revolutionaries and believed British promises of emancipation offered a more realistic path to liberty. So the Revolutionary period was not one unified movement. It was complicated, layered, and often divided along racial and economic lines. Planting a Liberty Tree in Maryland Photo Courtesy of Champ Zumbrun. The Liberty Tree in Maryland Photo courtesy of Champ Zumbrun Photo courtesy of – The Liberty Tree exhibit at American Revolution Museum at Yorktown, VA Photo courtesy of – The Liberty Tree exhibit at American Revolution Museum at Yorktown, VA Our commitment to storytelling – Our goal is to journey through history in search of the untold and little-known stories — the ones overshadowed by larger narratives, pushed to the margins, or too often silenced and forgotten. We believe history is richest when all voices, experiences, and perspectives are explored with honesty and care. We strive for accuracy, fairness, and thoughtful storytelling in every piece we create. Our work is grounded in research, historical records, oral histories, and cultural context. But we also recognize that history is not always fully preserved in written documents or official accounts. Sometimes it must also be understood ...
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    1 時間 13 分
  • Episode 45: African Americans and The First Memorial Day Celebration

    Episode 45: African Americans and The First Memorial Day Celebration
    2026/05/24
    African Americans and The First Memorial Day Celebration Memorial Day, the USCT, and the Black Americans Who Remembered First Do you know the story of African Americans and The First Memorial Day Celebration. There are some graves America remembers with marble, flags, and ceremony.And then there are others. Graves that began as trenches. Bodies placed quickly into the earth. Names unspoken. Families never notified. No proper prayer. No final honor. No mother, wife, child, or loved one standing close enough to say goodbye. For many Black soldiers who served in the Civil War, death did not always bring dignity. Even after fighting for the Union, even after risking their lives for a country still deciding whether it would recognize their humanity, many were buried without ceremony, without markers, and without the honor they had earned. But history has a way of waiting. It waits beneath the soil. It waits in old newspaper clippings. It waits in family stories passed down when official records fall silent. And in Charleston, South Carolina, in the spring of 1865, newly freed African Americans did something extraordinary. They remembered. They took a place of suffering, a former racetrack turned Confederate prison camp, and transformed it into sacred ground. Today on Quarter Miles Travel, we uncover the overlooked Black history of Memorial Day, the United States Colored Troops, and the freed men, women, and children who insisted that the soldiers who died for Union and liberty would not be forgotten. The Civil War was America’s deadliest conflict. Approximately 620,000 soldiers died, and about two-thirds of those deaths came not from bullets, but from disease. The country was broken. Families were shattered. Towns were emptied of sons. And across the South, the war did more than destroy buildings and battle lines, it shook the foundation of slavery itself. For enslaved people, the Civil War was not simply a war between North and South. It was a war that opened a door. A dangerous door, yes but one that led toward freedom. As Union forces moved through Southern states, enslaved men, women, and children made life-changing decisions. Some fled plantations. Some followed Union troops. Some entered contraband camps. Some joined the army. Some searched for relatives who had been sold away. And some simply tried to survive long enough to see what freedom might become. And then came the United States Colored Troops – the USCT. Black men enlisted to fight for the Union at a time when the country still refused to treat them as equals. They wore the uniform. They carried the flag. They faced Confederate bullets, disease, discrimination, and the knowledge that if captured, they could be treated far worse than white soldiers. They were fighting for the Union. But they were also fighting for something deeper. They were fighting for freedom with their bodies, their courage, and their names. In Charleston, South Carolina, during the final year of the war, Confederate forces turned the Washington Race Course and Jockey Club into a makeshift prison camp for captured Union soldiers. It had once been a place of leisure and wealth — a racetrack connected to the world of planters and privilege. But during the war, it became a place of suffering. At least 257 Union prisoners died there, many from disease and exposure. Their bodies were buried quickly in unmarked graves near the racetrack. No proper ceremony. No lasting dignity. Just a mass grave behind the grandstands. Then Charleston fell. The Confederate army evacuated the city. And the people who remained included thousands of newly freed African Americans — men, women, and children who understood exactly what those Union soldiers represented. To them, these were not nameless bodies. These were men who had died in a war that helped destroy slavery. So the freed people of Charleston acted. In the days leading up to May 1, 1865, roughly two dozen African American Charlestonians went to the site. They reinterred the bodies. They placed the graves in proper rows. They built a ten-foot-high white fence around the burial ground. Over the entrance, they placed words that still carry power: “Martyrs of the Race Course.” That phrase said everything. Created by a group called Friends of the Martyrs – A group of two dozen recently freed slaves who spent two weeks exhuming and reburying the bodies. And along with a group called the Patriotic Association of Colored Men They knew these soldiers had not simply died. They had died for something. Both groups helped exhume these brave soldiers and form a committee to honor their service and their lives with ceremony. On May 1, 1865, about 10,000 people gathered at the old racetrack in Charleston. Most were Black residents, newly freed people, joined by some white missionaries and teachers. The ceremony began in the morning. Around 3,000 Black schoolchildren marched around the racetrack carrying flowers. Imagine that ...
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    17 分