Carney's Medal of Honor: First Black Hero Recognized

William Carney waited thirty-seven years for his Medal of Honor. He had grabbed the Union flag as the color bearer fell during the doomed charge on Battery Wagner on July 18, 1863, took two bullets in his thigh and one in his chest, and crawled on his knees through sand and Confederate fire while holding the Stars and Stripes off the ground. He told his unit: "Boys, I only did my duty; the old flag never touched the ground." The assault on Battery Wagner was part of the Union campaign to capture Charleston, South Carolina. The 54th Massachusetts Infantry, one of the first African American regiments in the Union Army, led the attack across six hundred yards of open beach under murderous fire from the fortified Confederate position. Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the regiment's white commanding officer, was killed on the parapet. Nearly half the regiment was killed, wounded, or captured. The assault failed militarily, but the bravery of the 54th Massachusetts under fire demolished the widespread assumption that Black soldiers would not fight. Carney was born enslaved in Norfolk, Virginia, around 1840 and escaped to Massachusetts through the Underground Railroad. He enlisted in the 54th in February 1863. His actions at Battery Wagner made him the first African American to earn the Medal of Honor, though the decoration was not awarded until May 23, 1900. The thirty-seven-year delay reflected both the bureaucratic inefficiency of the military awards system and the racial politics that minimized Black soldiers' contributions for decades after the Civil War. Carney worked as a mail carrier in New Bedford, Massachusetts, after the war and became a local celebrity. He died on December 9, 1908, at sixty-eight.