ADAMS COUNTY, Ill. — Adams County Bicentennial Commission dedicated a new sign to Illinois’s first regiment of African American Union soldiers during the Civil War.
Charles Scholz, chairman of the Adams County Bicentennial Commission, said this regiment consisted of 500 black men who showed up at Quincy’s Bethel AME church back in 1863 to enlist, train, and fight in the war.
“They fought honorably. They were heroes, took heavy casualties,” Scholz said. “But maybe amongst the most significant things is when they paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington in front of Abraham Lincoln, first Black troops he’d ever seen, and they were from right here in Quincy.”…