Mosaic Templars Honors Black Veterans in New Little Rock Exhibit

The Mosaic Templars Cultural Center in downtown Little Rock opens a new exhibit today, November 10, that honors Black servicemen and women throughout U-S history. Titled “A Soldier’s Story: The Legacy of African American Service Members,” the exhibition examines what it means to fight a battle on two fronts: for equality at home and freedom abroad.

The collection spans from the Civil War through the modern era. Museum Executive Director Key Fletcher told Little Rock Public Radio that the exhibit begins with the Civil War, a period where Black soldiers fought for the ideals of a country that did not yet extend those ideals to them.

“There is a muster roll that we have in the exhibit that represents and dates back to early to the Civil War, and a soldier that is mustering out of service here in Arkansas. So when we think about, what did it mean to be a soldier when, at that time you were not necessarily considered as a person,” said Fletcher.

New exhibit to come to Mosaic Templars in Little Rock — THV11

The exhibit highlights the contrast between the battlefield performance of Black units and their treatment upon returning to the United States. During World War I and World War II, units like the Harlem Hellfighters earned reputations on the battlefields abroad.

Despite being some of the most tenacious fighters, many returned to Arkansas and were not given due justice in terms of what service members were guaranteed with housing and veteran benefits.

Fletcher said that these soldiers frequently sought out small openings in the hegemony of inequality and used them to effect permanent change. As Fletcher explained to Little Rock Public Radio, these individuals were unwilling to be denied opportunity, kept knocking at the door of freedom, and through that little crack in the door the nation began to see change.

The exhibit is community-sourced, relying on artifacts loaned by the families of Arkansas veterans. Among these items is a food bowl carried by Sergeant Ulysses Grant Baugh, Sr., which served as a lifeline in a Korean War prisoner-of-war camp. This piece provides a look at the experience of a Black POW.

“I feel like oftentimes when people talk about POWs, they don’t necessarily think about Black service men and women. So to have the representation of a Black POW in the exhibit, and that bowl for Sgt. Baugh really represented his life,” Fletcher told Little Rock Public Radio. Baugh survived being a POW in the Korean War, and he came back and did not share that story a whole lot.