For Release: November 17, 2000

National Park Service Press Release

Washington, D.C. -- National Park Service (NPS) Director Robert Stanton announced today that the names and military history of approximately 18,000 African American sailors in the Civil War Union Navy have been identified and incorporated into the Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System (CWSS). NPS Chief Historian Dwight Pitcaithley was joined by United States Navy Vice Admiral Edward Moore Jr. and Howard University President H. Patrick Swygert at the U.S. Navy Memorial in Washington, D.C. to make the formal announcement. Personal information, naval service and muster records included in the database can now be accessed through the NPS website at http://www.civilwar.nps.gov.

"The National Park Service is proud to join our partners at Howard University and the Department of the Navy in honoring the service of these African American Navy veterans," said Stanton. "This database makes previously inaccessible information available to all those interested in piecing together the individual experiences and lives of African Americans who served during the Civil War."

The Civil War Sailors Database is the product of a partnership formed in 1993 among Howard University, the Department of the Navy, and the NPS. Funding for the program was provided through grants from the Department of Defense Legacy Resources Management Program and the Naval Historical Center. A team of researchers from Howard University’s Department of History, headed by Dr. Joseph P. Reidy, Professor of History and Associate Dean of the Graduate School, examined hundreds of thousands of pages of naval records housed at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. for evidence about African American sailors.

Advised by a committee of experts in Civil War naval history from the Naval Historical Center, the NPS, the National Archives, and the Smithsonian Institution, the researchers systematically pieced together the history of the African American sailors in the Civil War Navy. The database was compiled from surviving personnel records such as rendezvous reports and ships’ muster rolls, and then compared with the Navy’s Index to Service Histories prepared by the Navy Department during the World War II era.

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The web site contains personal information, naval service and muster records for the 18,000 sailors. It also includes a map of the world and reports showing places of birth. The sailors came from nearly one hundred countries and territories outside of the United States, thus giving a vivid picture of the African Diaspora in the middle of the Nineteenth Century. (See "Sailor Origins" on the Web Site.) Searches can be performed by sailor’s name, city or state of nativity, and by vessel name.

Over the course of the Civil War, 18,000 African American men and more than a dozen African American women served in the U.S. Navy, some 15% of the total enlisted force. These sailors served on almost every one of the nearly 700 navy vessels and eight earned the Medal of Honor for their heroism in battle. The research continues today as the partners examine pension files in order to supplement this list of names with a more complete record of information about the experience of the naval enlistees and their families throughout the Civil War era.

The CWSS is a cooperative effort by the NPS and several other public and private partners, to present information about the Civil War on a web-site containing basic facts about servicemen who served on both sides during the Civil War, linked to other historical information. Other CWSS partners include the Genealogical Society of Utah (Mormon Church), the Federation of Genealogical Societies, the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and the National Archives. The goal of the CWSS is to increase the American people's understanding of this decisive era in American history by making information about it widely accessible. The CWSS will enable the public to make a personal link between themselves and history, and in some cases make connections to the battlefields and other historic places managed by the National Park Service.

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