7/27/2008

Integrated Union regiments (cont.)

Mitch Hagmaier comments:
"If a soldier's envelope did not immediately indicate race, Moss would open his file and carefully examine the documents to search for physical descriptions such as eyes, hair and complexion. If the three criteria were marked as black, she added the soldier's name to her list."

Um, that's a little... loose. How many Greeks and Sicilians with anglicized names are getting counted as black in her list?
My own inference is that those people used "black complexion" the way we do - perhaps a risky assumption.