Under the baobab: Of the many reasons to celebrate the Fourth, some are deeply personal

Referring to Independence Day in 1776 John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail:

“…(It) will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival ... solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this time forward.”

Adams and the others were about to pledge their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. They were not alone in their sacrifice. The Fourth continued to be special. On July 4, 1826, 50 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died. It was fitting. Both had composed the first draft of the Declaration.

In 1863 there were three things that turned the tide of the Civil War in favor of the Union. Two of them occurred on the Fourth. One happened 125 miles from State College in a town called Gettysburg. General Robert Lee, head of the Confederate forces, invaded Pennsylvania with his Army of Northern Virginia. Lee’s forces were confronted by General Meade’s Army of the Potomac. Nearly 200,000 men clashed on the battlefield. There were 50,000 casualties on both sides during the three-day battle. It was the costliest battle in U.S. history. Meade won on July 4.

On the same day, on the other side of the country, the Battle of Vicksburg was won by General Grant, (he later become head of the Union Forces). Vicksburg, Mississippi, was the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River. President Lincoln had declared Vicksburg “the key” to defeating the insurrectionists. Jeff Davis, president of the Confederacy, called Vicksburg “the nailhead that held the South’s two halves together.” His plantation was just south of the city.

The third factor that turned the war toward a Union victory was the participation of African Americans. It wasn’t until the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation that Blacks were permitted to enlist in the Army and Navy. Over 200,000 signed up. From 1863 until the end of the war three-fourths of the new enlistees were Black. They were mostly formerly enslaved people. The segregated units of the U.S. Colored Troops were key to providing replacements and injecting energy into a decimated Union Army. At the conclusion of the war over 10% of the Army and 25% percent of the Navy were African Americans.

One of those men was my great-great grandfather, Curtis McKenzie.

Curtis was born an enslaved person on a plantation in Vicksburg, Mississippi, in 1840. After the siege of the city was lifted on July 4, 1863, the 52nd Regiment of the United States Colored Infantry was formed. Attached to the 2nd Brigade, 1st Division, United States Colored Troops, District of Vicksburg, Mississippi, the regiment was posted and garrisoned at Vicksburg, Mississippi, until June 1865. They saw action at the Battle of Coleman’s Plantation, Port Gibson on July 4, 1864, and in Bayou Liddell on Oct. 15. Curtis joined the 52nd as a private in 1864 and was honorably discharged on May 5, 1866 when the troop was mustered out.

He remained In Vicksburg working as a drayman. He married Martha. They had several children including Daisy McKenzie (Dixon) who was my great-grandmother. I knew her. She told me stories. Curtis died in 1908. Daisy moved her family north to Chicago as part of the great migration in the 1930s. One of her children was Willie Dixon, who along with Muddy Waters fathered the Chicago Blues. He was my father’s uncle. Another of Daisy’s children was my grandmother, Johnie. Her son, my dad, following a family tradition, became a career soldier, spending over 20 years in the army. He served in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam.

We seriously celebrate the Fourth. We have skin in the game. We have left our blood on the field. Huzzah!