WASHINGTON (AP) — It was the nighttime in the summertime of 2021 once I lastly discovered the lacking piece of my household historical past.
My great-great-great-great grandfather Hewlett Sands, born into slavery in Oyster Bay, New York in 1820, was one of many greater than 200,000 names listed on the African American Civil Struggle Memorial in Washington, D.C. That meant he was a soldier who served in a United States Coloured Troops regiment that fought for the Union – and the liberty we nonetheless have fun right now.
Because the display screen glowed, a mixture of feelings – nervousness, elation, delight – washed over me. It was step one in understanding the story of his life. I need to share what I learn about him!
I had to withstand the urge to race to the Spirit of Freedom statue and hint my fingers over his title etched on the close by Wall of Honor. I held off till the solar got here up.
This Juneteenth I’m returning to the memorial to honor him and all who served our nation, one which spent its first two centuries seeing most of its Black folks as another person’s property. In a particular ceremony, I’ll stick with it the greater than 150-year-old commemoration of enslaved folks in Galveston, Texas, discovering out on June 19, 1865, that they’d been freed. It’s been a longtime sacred celebration for a lot of Black Individuals, however solely just lately was acknowledged as a federal vacation.
I’m not simply going for myself or my household. I additionally need to have fun Frank Smith, a civil rights chief and the memorial’s director, whose work preserving this lesser-known American historical past helped me perceive the place I got here from and who I used to be.
“Congratulations on discovering your ancestor,” Smith informed me once more final week over jollof rice, after he first informed me that in the summertime of 2021 after I discovered my connection to Hewlett Sands. I feel it’s what he says to everybody who finds their ancestor on the wall, a thanks for all these males who sacrificed.
I realized about Hewlett Sands whereas researching my household’s historical past, hoping to interweave it right into a guide I’m writing about Coretta Scott King’s work to try to remodel America right into a nonviolent society after the assassination of her husband, Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968.
Over the numerous a long time because the Civil Struggle, there was loads of displacement amongst my ancestors; folks moved away and by no means got here again and loads of our household tales have been misplaced.
However I do know that the Sands males served valiantly in World Struggle II. There was a newspaper headline about “The Sands Household Fights” with {a photograph} of a number of of them. We knew much more about World Struggle II than the Civil Struggle.
In line with the data I discovered, Hewlett Sands was born on Nov. 29, 1820, within the dwelling of the Townsend household, a rich and highly effective household on Lengthy Island who held many enslaved folks earlier than New York abolished slavery in 1827.
It’s not clear to me how he spent a lot of his life between 1820 and 1852. He apparently labored as a farm laborer, and whilst a clam digger. When he was 32, he met and married a younger widow named Anne Amelia Payne, who took Sands as her final title.
In April 1861, Confederates fired on Fort Sumter in South Carolina, igniting the Civil Struggle.
In January 1864, Hewlett Sands would acquire a $300 bounty and be a part of the twenty sixth United States Coloured Troops infantry regiment, which ready for warfare together with 1000’s of different troopers on Riker’s Island. His enlistment papers say he was 42, however the truth is he was about to show 44.
In line with navy data, his regiment – after enduring rugged circumstances in camp — boarded a ship named Warrior in March 1864 sure for South Carolina, the place they fought within the battle at Honey Hill and different engagements.
Life after the warfare for Hewlett Sands was outlined by a sequence of financial hardships. He fell and misplaced imaginative and prescient in a single eye; and he misplaced an inheritance he meant to cross right down to his household by means of the generations. He died on April 8, 1901, on the age of 81.
However his and Amelia’s son, James Edward Sands, received married and had two youngsters, one among whom was Alfred Sands. Amongst Alfred’s youngsters was my grandfather Alonzo, who served along with his brothers in World Struggle II. In June 1960, Alonzo and Catherine Sands gave start to a boy, Lonnie, who’s my dad.
Like Hewlett Sands, I grew up in Lengthy Island, within the city of Roslyn, the place I developed a love for studying. I first learn concerning the lifetime of Martin Luther King on the Bryant Library, and by age 11 was giving speeches about him and his affect on my life. It was in Roslyn, as a boy, that I made a decision I wished to be a journalist, after a compassionate Newsday reporter visited to get our household’s facet of the story in an article a couple of neighborhood controversy.
Now, engaged on this Juneteenth story as a journalist, I really feel it’s a part of my mission to teach and inform folks about all this. And to have the ability to share it with my dad, my mother – all of my household.
I’ve a really sturdy sense of connection to the concept Hewlett Sands risked his life for not simply his household, however for the next supreme. I feel all these males shared a way of doing one thing that was going to affect generations that they might by no means meet.
Nobody dwelling had ever seen Hewlett’s grave, and I went simply the opposite day. On a cloudless day, my dad and I found his tombstone, inscribed Co. D twenty sixth U.S. INF. Someway, we felt just a little nearer to him, and just a little nearer to one another.
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Darren Sands is a Washington-based reporter with the AP’s Faith Workforce.
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