Shutterstock The United States Colored Troops at Petersburg Petersburg National Battlefield in Virginia holds a powerful ...

Wikimedia Commons/Taterian Belle Boyd, Civil War Spy Most teenage girls don’t shoot federal soldiers on the Fourth of July.

Some 179,000 Black men served in the Union Army during the Civil War and another 19,000 served in the Navy, according to the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.

A white Illinois teen attaches himself to a regiment of Black Union soldiers in the satirical Civil War novel "How to Dodge a Cannonball." NPR's Ayesha Rascoe talks with author Dennard Dayle about it.

Some 179,000 Black men served in the Union Army during the Civil War and another 19,000 served in the Navy, according to the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.