Five miles away, Heather Wilson, the deputy director of the Cameron Art Museum, wanted to tell a different story about the city. The U.S. Colored Troops, 80 percent of whom were formerly enslaved men from the South, accounted for over half of the more than 2,000 Union casualties in the battles for Wilmington — one of which had taken place on the museum’s grounds. Yet there was no monument honoring them.
“These men fought for their freedom, here, where the museum stands, and this is vitally important to who we are as a community,” Wilson says. “I want children to stand at the sculpture and look up and be inspired by the proud face of the soldiers and think: That could be me. That man looks like me.”
And so, while the nation continues to take down Civil War monuments — including the statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee in Richmond, which was removed in September, and the two statues in Wilmington, which were removed last year — the museum is installing a new memorial that recognizes the sacrifices of Black soldiers in the Union Army. “Boundless,” by North Carolina artist Stephen Hayes, will be unveiled this month — and it aims to put forward a new story line about African Americans during the Civil War. “As a Black man in America, you see the imagery of a Black person in chains, being whipped, begging, kneeling and helpless,” Hayes told StarNews, a local media outlet. “This project is important to me because, as a creator, I get to change that narrative — by giving Black soldiers a sense of honor and pride.”
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