The United States Colored Troops, which has a connection to Athens, are featured as the cover story in the latest edition of Alabama Heritage Magazine.

The article, “Fighting for Freedom: Alabama’s USCT Soldiers,” tells of the escaped slaves from the Tennessee River Valley who joined the United States Colored Troops during the Civil War. Author Robert S. Davis of Wallace State Community College in Hanceville teaches history and oversees the Wallace State Library’s genealogy collection and family research center.

During the course of his research, Davis learned families of escaped slaves settled in a camp in Corinth, Mississippi, and later in camps in Decatur and Huntsville.

The men who enlisted served with distinction in Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee. Some of their number worked as cooks and teamsters in Gen. Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign and March to the Sea.

Escaped slaves paid a price for their freedom. Alabama soldiers died in the infamous Fort Pillow Massacre.

White officers surrendered USCT troops in the fighting at Athens and Decatur. Soldiers who did not escape obtained rescue when other black regiments stormed Confederate Fort Blakeley, near Mobile, at the end of the war.

Members of the USCT suffered discrimination in medical care, pay, supplies and veterans’ benefits. They died at a disproportionate rate to their white comrades, even after the war.

Fort Henderson in Athens is planned to become a monument to their service. Corinth has a park of statues memorializing the Alabama soldiers and the refugee families.

Davis found the story of the Alabama USCT soldiers in materials in the Limestone and Morgan county archives and in libraries across North Alabama. Local historians Peggy Towns and David Meagher contributed their research to the story.

Davis has published more than 1,300 times, given hundreds of talks and appeared on television documentaries. His recent publications include Frenchman R. A. Moen’s trip through North Alabama in 1831 for the Alabama Review; an article on Native American stone walls in North Alabama; and the conspiracy and murder around the Dooly-Egypt Plantation in Lincoln County, Georgia.

Davis will offer a continuing education class in family history/computer genealogy Feb. 5 and 6. A similar class on Southern Genealogy and Civil War research will be March 18-19. For information on these classes, contact Amanda Aris at amanda.aris@wallacestate.edu or 256-352-8386.