Members of Vicksburg High School’s JROTC color guard stand beside the Mississippi African-American Monument after it was unveiled to the public at a dedication ceremony Saturday in the Vicksburg National Military Park. (Jenny SevcikThe Vicksburg Post)

[2/15/04]The United States’ first national park monument to black Civil War soldiers was unveiled Saturday in Vicksburg National Military Park, and officials and historians said it was overdue.

More than 1,000 people gathered for the morning ceremony beside the monument, on Grant Avenue in the park’s northeastern corner.

U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Robert Crear, a Vicksburg native and former commander of the Corps of Engineers’ Vicksburg District who last year commanded Task Force Restore Iraqi Oil, was the ceremony’s keynote speaker.

“It’s important that we are helping to complete the record for all to understand, regardless of race,” Crear said.

Monument committee chairman and Jackson State University history professor Robert Walker, who served two terms as mayor of Vicksburg, began the monument project 16 years ago. At the ceremony and at a Friday forum featuring black historians at Bethel A.M.E. Church, Walker was lauded.

“He made it happen,” Crear said of Walker.

The general also recognized the Mississippi Legislature, the state Department of Archives and History and the City of Vicksburg. The project’s funding included $275,000 from the Legislature and $25,000 from the city government.

Dr. Kim Sessums of Brookhaven sculpted the monument’s statue. It depicts three black men, one a wounded soldier with his arms around another soldier and a civilian who are carrying him from battle.

“They are linked,” Crear said of the three figures. “They have their arms around him, because we as a people in Mississippi are linked. There is only one history Mississippi history, American history. Let’s hope this helps to complete the history.”

The crowd gathered despite rain and temperatures around the low-40s. After brief remarks beside the monument, ceremony continued in the Vicksburg Convention Center.

Former Gov. William Winter, now the president of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History board of trustees, officially presented the monument on behalf of the state to a representative of the National Park Service, Patricia Hooks.

“I’m proud of the state of Mississippi for doing that. This monument is overdue. The role of African-American troops in the Civil War has long been underreported and underappreciated,” Winter said.

Crear spoke to the convention-center crowd of one of the newly formed black units’ largest roles in Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s 1863 campaign for Vicksburg.

The city fell on July 4 of that year after a 46-day siege. Congress created the military park in 1899.

“One of the bloodiest battles took place near here at Milliken’s Bend,” he said of the June 7, 1863, fighting across the Mississippi River and about 12 miles north of Vicksburg. He added that the battle was the first in which black troops outnumbered whites, and that much of the fighting there was hand-to-hand.

“They worked hard, and they fought bravely,” he said of the black troops there. “They held off the enemy for nine hours. The result was that the line held.”

At the Friday-night forum, Walker told a crowd of 150 or more people that he became involved in the project when “asked as kind of an afterthought” to be part of it in 1988. The subject of the monument “has not been popularized over the years,” he said, adding that the Milliken’s Bend victory was a part of the strategy that led to the capture of Vicksburg.

“I felt that that was a story that needed to be told,” he said.

James Dillard, who is from Vicksburg but lives in Chicago, returned home for the monument-dedication events on a bus that carried others who are originally from here, Greenwood and Greenville, he said.

About 42 fifth- and sixth-grade boys from Warren Central Intermediate School, under the direction of Ruby Regan, sang for the crowd in the convention center. The Utica Jubilee Singers of Hinds Community College also sang.