# William Harvey Carney (1840–1908) Sergeant of the [[54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment]] who carried the national colors up the parapet at the [[Second Battle of Fort Wagner]] on July 18, 1863, held them through the assault and the retreat while twice severely wounded, and brought them off the field. **His is the earliest action by an African American for which the Medal of Honor was awarded** — a formulation that has to be precise, because the award itself did not arrive for thirty-seven years. ## Before the War Born **February 29, 1840, in Norfolk, Virginia**, into slavery. By most accounts he escaped north via the Underground Railroad and rejoined his father in Massachusetts, settling in New Bedford — a whaling port with a substantial free Black community and a well-developed abolitionist network, the same town where [[Frederick Douglass]] had landed after his own escape two decades earlier. He had intended to enter the ministry. He enlisted in the 54th in **March 1863**, in the first wave of recruitment, and was promoted sergeant. His own explanation of the choice was that he could serve God better by serving his country and his oppressed brothers. ## Fort Wagner When the color sergeant of the 54th was shot down during the assault, Carney took the national flag. His Medal of Honor citation states it plainly: > "When the color sergeant was shot down, this soldier grasped the flag, led the way to the parapet, and planted the colors thereon. When the troops fell back he brought off the flag, under a fierce fire in which he was twice severely wounded." He was wounded in the head, chest, right arm and leg. Reaching the Union lines, he is reported to have said that **the flag had never touched the ground.** The colors mattered more than modern readers tend to assume. In 1863 the regimental flag was the unit's command-and-control system in smoke and darkness — the point every man aligned on — and its loss was the standard public marker of a regiment's disgrace. A regiment raised specifically to be judged could not afford to lose its colors, and everyone in the assault knew it. Carney's act was not decorative; it was the one thing available to him that answered the question the regiment had been sent to answer. He was discharged for his wounds in **1864**. ## The Medal, and the Thirty-Seven Years Carney's **Medal of Honor was issued on May 23, 1900** — nearly thirty-seven years after the action, and more than three decades into his civilian life. The distinction that gets garbled in popular accounts is worth stating exactly: | Claim | Accurate? | |---|---| | First African American to *perform* an action for which the Medal of Honor was awarded | **Yes** — July 18, 1863 | | First African American to *receive* the Medal of Honor | **No** — Robert Blake received his on April 16, 1864, for an action months after Carney's, and roughly twenty Black servicemen received the Medal before Carney did | The Congressional Medal of Honor Society draws this line explicitly. It is not pedantry. **The thirty-seven-year gap is itself the historical fact** — the same delay pattern visible in the Shaw Memorial's eighty-five-year wait to inscribe the soldiers' names, and in the retroactive Medal of Honor reviews of the 1990s that awarded medals to Black veterans of both world wars decades after the fact. Recognition of Black military service in the United States has consistently arrived late enough to cost nothing. ## The 1897 Dedication When the [[Shaw Memorial]] was dedicated on Boston Common on **May 31, 1897**, sixty-five surviving veterans of the 54th led the procession — and **Carney carried the United States flag**, thirty-four years after carrying it up the parapet at Fort Wagner. He was still three years from receiving the Medal of Honor for that act, and the monument he marched to did not yet carry his name or any of his comrades'. ## After the War Carney returned to New Bedford, maintained the city's streetlights, and then **delivered mail for thirty-two years**. He was a founding vice president of **National Association of Letter Carriers Branch 18 in 1890** — a union role that belongs in the record alongside the 54th's pay strike, both being the same instinct applied twice. He later worked for the Massachusetts Department of State at the State House in Boston. He died on **December 9, 1908**, at Boston City Hospital, of complications from an elevator accident at the Massachusetts State House. ## Why He Matters for the KB **He is the specific individual the Lost Cause has to not mention.** Generalized claims about Black passivity in the war survive contact with statistics better than they survive contact with a named man, born enslaved in Virginia, who escaped, enlisted, was shot four times carrying the United States flag up a Confederate parapet, and lived another forty-five years in Massachusetts delivering the mail. [[The Lost Cause]] handles Carney by omission, which is how it handles everything at the [[Second Battle of Fort Wagner]]. **The award delay is a measurable variable.** Time-to-recognition is a cleaner metric than rhetoric for tracking how the state actually valued Black service — and it is one the KB can extend forward through the 1990s retroactive reviews and the ongoing fights over base names and honors catalogued in [[Confederate-Named Military Bases]] and the eighty-five-year inscription gap on the [[Shaw Memorial]]. ## See Also - [[Second Battle of Fort Wagner]] — The assault of July 18, 1863 - [[54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment]] — His regiment - [[Robert Gould Shaw]] — Killed in the same assault - [[Frederick Douglass]] — New Bedford, and the recruitment of the 54th - [[The Lost Cause]] — The mythology his record contradicts - [[Shaw Memorial]] — He carried the flag at its 1897 dedication - [[United States Colored Troops]] — The federal force his state regiment was never folded into - [[Robert Smalls]] — The other great delayed-recognition case: Navy pension in 1897, a warship renamed in 2023