We are really interested in American history and when we saw clips from the movie Glory, we knew we wanted to research the African American men who served in the 54th Massachusetts Infantry during the Civil War. We were impressed with their bravery and how they showed society that they were equal to white soldiers. They did all of this even though the society they lived in thought that they were not capable of fighting. Blacks were not allowed to fight in the United States army until the men of the 54th proved that they were great soldiers.
When we started our research, we googled “54th Massachusetts” and followed where the search took us. We looked at a lot of websites and books and created a research notebook to keep track of our sources. Our research notebook was also where we put quotes and other primary sources. We ended up using newspaper articles from the time, photographs, political cartoons, books and websites. One of our best sources was a book about the 54th that had lots of good information and photos. We didn’t get to visit any archives or museums, but we did visit the Massachusetts Historical Society’s website. When we saw the poster for recruiting black soldiers, we thought it was odd. Why wouldn’t they want to recruit every man, no matter what color his skin was?
We decided to do a website because we did a website last year and we wanted to try the new website maker. We created the pages one at a time and decided what order they should go in to tell the story. We spent lots of time learning how to use the website maker. It was hard at first, but we eventually learned how to do it. The colors used in a website shouldn’t matter as much as the content, but we did want it to look nice. As a team, we decided to work on our pages separately and then come back together to talk about what we changed and why.
The 54th Massachusetts Infantry is a perfect topic for the theme, “Breaking Barriers.” These men shattered racial barriers and showed that black men were willing and able to fight for their country. By being brave and strong, the men of the 54th set an example for the African American community and gained the respect of the nation.