Artist Carrie Mae Weems and Carl J. Cruz, a descendant of Sgt. William H. Carney, the first Black soldier awarded the Medal of Honor, reflect on the story of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment and its connections to the struggles still going on today. The 54th was the first unit of Black soldiers to fight a major battle in the Civil War. Weems used a photograph of the memorial to the 54th in a series about the Black Americans who left the South in search of greater freedom. Carrie Mae Weems’s Untitled can be seen in conversation with Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s The Shaw 54th Regiment Memorial at the National Gallery of Art.