This Veterans Day, the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center in Downtown Little Rock is opening an exhibit honoring Black servicemen and women throughout U-S history.
The exhibit, A Soldier’s Story, meditates on what it means to fight a battle on two fronts: for equality at home and freedom abroad.
Museum Executive Director Key Fletcher says the exhibit begins with the Civil War, where Black soldiers fought for a nation’s ideals that it had not yet extended to them.
"There is a muster roll that we have in the exhibit that represents and dates back to early to the Civil War, and a soldier that is mustering out of service here in Arkansas. So when we think about, what did it mean to be a soldier when, at that time you were not necessarily considered as a person.”
Fletcher says these disparities continued throughout wars in the decades that followed.
Throughout World Wars I and II, Harlem Hellfighters earned a reputation on the battlefields abroad.
Despite being some of the most tenacious fighters, many returned home without a hero’s welcome.
"We have servicemen who were from the Harlem Hellfighters and World War II, who were, in Germany, known as the most vicious soldiers on the battlefield, yet they came back to Arkansas and were not given due justice in terms of what service members were guaranteed with housing and veteran benefits.”
Alongside their battlefield tenacity, African American soldiers throughout history pushed boundaries at home, making their call for equality impossible to ignore.
Fetcher said many sought out whatever small openings they could find in the hegemony of inequality and leveraged them to effect permanent change.
"People who are unwilling to be denied opportunity, who keep knocking at the door of freedom, and people thinking that they're not necessarily going to pass the muster, and they do. And through that little crack in the door we begin to see change.”
The exhibit is community-sourced, meaning many of the artifacts on display come from families of Arkansas veterans who have lent their private artifacts to the museum, so that their stories can be told.
Fletcher says that includes the story of Sergeant Ulysses Grant Baugh, who held on to his food bowl as an anchor to his life.
"I feel like oftentimes when people talk about POWs, they don't necessarily think about Black service men and women. So to have the representation of a Black POW in the exhibit, and that bowl for Sgt. Baugh really represented his life," said Fletcher. "So he survived being a POW in the Korean War, and he came back and didn't share that story a whole lot. So we're so fortunate that they lent that particular piece, that object to us.”
‘A Soldier's Story: The Legacy of African American Service Members’ opens Tuesday, November 10, and runs through March 20, 2027. As always, the exhibit and the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center are free and open to the public.
