Several times a year for almost three decades, D.C. resident Calvin Osborne has suited up in a Civil War uniform to reenact the stories of Black soldiers who fought for the abolition of slavery.

Ever since he saw the 1989 movie “Glory,” about one of the Union Army’s first Black regiments, Osborne said he has felt a calling to honor Civil War troops of color.

“That movie shook my soul,” said Osborne, 59, who is the associate director of the D.C. Office of Federal and Regional Affairs. “Until that time, I didn’t know that Black soldiers had fought for their own freedom.”

Osborne joined the District’s Black Civil War reenactment group, Company B, and is now president of the volunteer organization. He said he has found purpose in researching the lives of Black Civil War soldiers, most of whom were once enslaved.

But then last year, he found out about an even more personal connection to the Civil War: He learned his great-great-grandfather, William Lacy, had escaped slavery at age 14, then fought in the Civil War.

You can read more in an article by Cathy Free published in the Washington Post at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2021/07/21/civil-war-black-soldier-grandfather/.