JACKSON, Mich. (WLNS) — A brand new e-book is now shining a highlight on the first Michigan Coloured Infantry and the mark they left on American historical past.
At simply 23 years outdated, Maurice Imhoff is redefining the narrative round Michigan’s previous, whereas bringing forgotten heroes again into focus.
“We are never told the story of the over 180,000 Black men who took up arms to go fight for their freedom of others. We don’t get told that story of them capturing flags on the battlefield,” Imhoff mentioned. “Fighting for their other brothers in arms, protecting each other.”
As each a historian and writer, Imhoff sees the historical past as extra than simply the previous, however as a lesson at the moment’s era can nonetheless study from.
“You’re talking a lot of 18 through 25-year-olds who were part of the regiment. It wasn’t a bunch of older men,” Imhoff mentioned. “These were younger guys who had just got their first taste at freedom. 1000 of the 1400 men were former slaves.”
Imhoff says a number of the males’s journeys to freedom began lengthy earlier than the warfare, whereas they escaped slavery by way of the Underground Railroad.
“A lot of men took the Underground Railroad to come to Michigan,” Imhoff mentioned. “They were men who made it all the way to Canada but then heard about this regiment being formed and came back to the United States.”
The connection to that historical past runs deep in Jackson, the place the regiment’s story first took form and the place its legacy nonetheless marches on.
“To have about 10 years later, a regiment, a full regiment of black soldiers in uniform, marching through the same streets was remarkable for this community, and I think it still stands the test of time,” Imhoff mentioned.
Imhoff says the e-book, ‘The first Michigan Coloured Regiment: Free Males Who Fought Slavery,’ is on the market on-line on Amazon, in addition to at Goal shops round Lansing and Jackson.
