Last night on PBS I saw a segment concerning a black man in a GAR photo. Actually there were three black men in the photo and the gist of the segment was to indentify one of the men as an ancestor of the person doing the inquiry. Long story, short story, they did identify the man in the photo as the ancestor of the person making the inquiry. The whole point in my case is that it got me to thinking about how many GAR posts had black members so today I went by the GAR HEadquarters and Museum which is located here in Springfield to see what I could find and as you can imagine they have lots of photo;s taken in the past of GAR get togethers and Post meetings, etc. and I did see many photo's that had both black and white members of the GAR in them. That go me to thinking, was it the same in the United Confederate Veterans camps. The only sourse I have for that is the internet so I googled "United Confederate Veterans photo's" to see if I could find some showing Black and White Confederate Veterans posing together. Here is my problem, I could find lots of photo's of UCV Camps but I did not see any black veterans in any of the pictures. I found some photo's of UCV men in parades and I did not see any black men in those either. I know that there were many black soldiers in the Confederate army, since we have had many posts attesting to that fact here in the past. I found photo's taken in Decatur,Tx; Little Rock, Page County, Va.;Americus,Ga. as well as one of the 1st. LA Guard but they were in uniform during the late hostilities. I know they must have made room for their black comrades in their organization. I am wondering if perhaps they created seperate but equal camps for the black men. Anyone have any ideas?
FC