After Decades, the Full African American Civil War Memorial Museum Is Finally Coming

On July 18, 1863, one of the first all-Black army regiments to serve in the Civil War stormed Fort Wagner in South Carolina. The fierce assault against the Confederate Army—portrayed in the film Glory—inspired more than 180,000 Black men to enlist as part of President Abraham Lincoln’s tide-turning decision to form the US Colored Troops, or USCT.

This summer, on the anniversary of that famous battle, the full version of DC’s African American Civil War Memorial Museum will finally open, following years of delays due to the pandemic and funding issues. The project is the brainchild of activist and former DC Council member Frank Smith, who has been working on it since the ’90s. “I have been thinking and praying and preaching and carrying on about this for all these many years,” he says, “and I’m glad to say that we’ve got a date now that we can rely upon.”

Located in Shaw at Vermont Avenue and U Street, the 15,000-square-foot museum tells the stories of Black Civil War soldiers through live reenactments, educational videos, and performances in a 100-seat auditorium. (One of those soldiers is Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, after whom the neighborhood is named.) There are also artifacts such as drums used for communication during the war, uniforms, and Bill of Sale documents of enslaved people.

Smith has been working toward this moment since 1992, when, as a DC Council member, he secured congressional permission to build an African American Civil War memorial on federal land in the U Street corridor. The memorial—a bronze statue surrounded by 209,145 names of USCT members—was unveiled in 1998. While doing research for the memorial, Smith acquired a number of artifacts and materials, and he had the idea to use them as the basis for a small museum. For years, it was essentially a traveling exhibit, and then the collection was housed on and off in a gymnasium inside its current building (previously the historic Grimke School).

Now the free museum will at last have a full, permanent home. New offerings include a video of Michelle Obama talking about two of her ancestors who served in the USCT, a karaoke-style installation where children can sing freedom songs along with a video of civil-rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, and a “Hall of Heroes” that spotlights African American servicemembers throughout history. The new “Bullets to Ballots” exhibit traces the story of post–­Civil War voting rights.

Visitors might also encounter the museum’s “interpreter,” a staffer named Marquett Awa-Milton who often dons a Civil War uniform and shares stories of forgotten soldiers of color with people who stop to talk to him. “These were the men that saved this nation when it was divided,” he says. “If it wasn’t for them, we wouldn’t have the things we have in this country.”

This article appears in the March 2025 issue of Washingtonian.

Briana Thomas

Briana A. Thomas is a local journalist, historian, and tour guide who specializes in the research of D.C. history and culture. She is the author of the Black history book, Black Broadway in Washington, D.C., a story that was first published in Washingtonian in 2016.