African American Civil War museum dedication honors black
soldiers July 18, 2011 · Print This Article - Back in 1962,
Frank Smith Jr. left Morehouse College in Atlanta and went to
Mississippi as a civil rights activist with the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. In Holly Springs, he met a
man who turned out to be the descendant of an African American
Civil War veteran. “I found it ironic that a guy whose
grandfather had fought to end slavery and preserve the Union was
still being treated like a second-class citizen, not even
allowed to vote,” Smith told me recently. “So I started reading
about the soldiers.” A seed was planted that would become the
African American Civil War Museum and Memorial, which Smith
founded in Washington in 1998. On Monday, nearly 50 years after
that chance encounter in Mississippi, he’ll preside over the
dedication of the museum’s expansion into a renovated school
building at 1925 Vermont Ave. NW. It is the largest museum of
its kind in the country and the only national memor