Colored Union Soldiers Monument

This heritage site is a part of the American Battlefield Trust's Road to Freedom: North Tour Guide app, which showcases sites integral to the Black experience during the Civil War era. Download the FREE app now.

Situated on Academy Green, this monument is the third oldest of the few nationwide that remember United States Colored Troops (USCT), and the first dedicated to these troops broadly — not just specific units or soldiers.

African American women of the “United Daughters of Veterans” joined with the First Baptist Church, which still meets across the street, to erect and dedicate the monument in 1910. These women, many likely related to USCT veterans and shaped by the experiences of the Civil War era, set their memories in stone as the ranks of USCT veterans dwindled and Jim Crow laws diminished the freedoms for which they fought. It remains in the care and protection of the Black community on land where freedmen established First Baptist in 1866, and later the first Black school and library in Perquimans County. While boldly encompassing all “Colored Union Soldiers,” the women carefully offered a different perspective calling it the “War of 1861-1865,” rather than siding with the northern “War of the Rebellion” or the southern “War Between the States.”

Two modern markers provide further context for this monument. The adjacent North Carolina Civil War Trails marker talks more about Black service during the Civil War and identifies three USCT veterans buried in Perquimans County. The other marker, placed in 2023, a few blocks away on the Perquimans County Courthouse grounds, describes this monument as context for the Confederate monument placed there in 1912.