U.S. African Brigade

The soldiers of the African Brigade were enslaved people months before they were soldiers. The 1st Mississippi Infantry (African Descent), organized in May 1863, took men from plantations around Milliken's Bend and from Vicksburg, and about a third of those who enlisted early that year had been born in the Upper South and had lived through the domestic slave trade. The regiment mostly drew garrison duty at Milliken's Bend, Vicksburg and later Goodrich's Landing. On March 11, 1864, it was redesignated the 51st United States Colored Infantry.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tensas River National Wildlife Refuge — 26 mi
  Nearly 80,000 acres of bottomland hardwood forest and oxbow lakes, with the state's largest population of Louisiana black bears and Theodore Roosevelt's 1907 hunt nearby.

More markers nearby

• Freedmen Fight at Milliken's Bend — steps away
• Grant's Canal — steps away
• Crescent Plantation — 14 mi
• Scottland Plantation House — 16 mi