The 54th Massachusetts Infantry

On May 28, 1863, the first Black regiment (the 54th Massachusetts) left Boston to fight in the Civil War. From the article:

"At nine o’clock on the morning on May 28, 1863, the 54th’s 1,007 Black soldiers and 37 white officers gathered in the Boston Common and prepared to head to the battlefields of the South. They did so in spite of an announcement by the Confederate Congress that every captured Black soldier would be sold into slavery and every white officer in command of Black troops would be executed. Cheering well-wishers, including the anti-slavery advocates William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips and Frederick Douglass, lined Boston’s streets."