BY LATE FALL, Washington expects to have its first memorial dedicated to black Civil War veterans. As many have acknowledged, it's a long overdue tribute.
More than 180,000 black men participated in the war, and the overwhelming majority of those fought for the Union. Many were slaves who became free men by enlisting in the military. A large number were from Maryland, mostly Eastern Shore and Southern Maryland plantations and some from Baltimore.
One of those soldiers went on to play a key role in black people's fight for racial equality in Baltimore. His name was John H. Murphy, the founder of the Afro-American newspaper.
By the summer of 1864, Murphy was fighting with Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and in 1865 with Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman in North Carolina when he captured the rebel army of Gen. Joseph Johnston.
On his 80th birthday in 1920, Murphy wrote a letter to his children that included his reflection on the war: "This was a real war for liberty. I went in a slave and came out a freedman. I went in a chattel and came out a man with the blue uniform of my country as a guarantee of freedom, and a sergeant's stripes on my arms to prove that there is promotion for those who earn it."
In 1868, John Murphy was discharged from the army, and married Mary Elizabeth Howard, daughter of a prosperous Montgomery County farmer. They had met at church.
In the late 1880s, living in Baltimore, Murphy became active in a local African Methodist Episcopal Church. There he conceived the idea of establishing a Sunday School newspaper. He bought a manually operated press, which he set up in his cellar and began printing The Sunday School Helper. Two years later, the pastor of Sharon Baptist Church, the Rev. William Alexander, started the Afro-American, a four-page sheet to report on church and community activities. Murphy became Alexander's business manager.
Murphy's interest in publishing increased, and in 1896 he paid $20 for the name Afro-American and began publishing under that masthead.
The Afro-American trumpeted the cause of black people throughout the Jim Crow years. It covered the civil rights struggle long before many major daily newspapers considered such stories as worthy of coverage. Eventually, it would publish editions in Baltimore, Washington and Richmond, Va. It is still publishing today.
John H. Murphy died in 1922.
When the African American Civil War Memorial opens in the Shaw Metro Station between U Street and Vermont Avenue, Northwest, it will honor all of the black men who fought in the Union army, including Sgt. John H. Murphy -- slave, soldier, printer, publisher, renowned citizen and civic leader.