African American Civil War Museum

This guide to the African American Civil War Museum in Washington, D.C. starts with the pay gap Black soldiers of the United States Colored Troops fought under during the Civil War, and Sergeant William Walker's court-martial for leading his company in refusing the shorted wage. It traces how that grievance became the Wall of Honor a few blocks away, and how former DC council member Frank Smith spent years chasing grants and donors to get more than two hundred thousand names inscribed there. Best heard with a stop at the Wall of Honor before you step inside the museum itself.