Little physical evidence of the contributions of the 102nd United States Colored Infantry remains near a park on the city’s east side where the Black Bottom neighborhood once stood — but that could soon change.  

A new archaeological scan of the ground around Campau Park has identified the location of the six barracks of Camp Ward. A small team of archaeologists and historians is hoping to perform more scans for evidence of the camp’s remnants, and may excavate the site.

The members of the 102nd United States Colored Infantry trained at Camp Ward, and viewed themselves as “freedom fighters” and helped turn the tide of the war, said Dale Rich, a Black Civil War historian. In 1863, as the North and South battled to a stalemate in the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Emancipation Proclamation. Virtually overnight, Black men were allowed to join the Union Army and fight.

More than 200,000 men answered the call — including about 1,000 in Detroit who were not just fighting to preserve the nation but to liberate their families. 

“There were a bunch of men who wanted to fight back against the masters who had done things like beat them and rape their wives,” Rich said. “They wanted to get rid of those evil folks who would continue to mistreat their families if they didn’t fight. They saved America.” 

Combining historic maps from the Civil War era with scans of the ground in Campau Park performed over three days last August, researchers identified remnants of the Black Bottom neighborhood. It was for decades the epicenter of cultural life for the city’s African-American population until it was torn down in a racist “urban renewal” project in the 1960s and 1970s. 

The remains of the neighborhood’s structures and historic maps that detail the layout of Black Bottom pointed researchers to the precise location where the Camp Ward barracks would have sat. The team, which includes University of Michigan archaeology researchers, historians and a private firm, are now trying to plan their next steps. 

If they can get permission to perform further scans on private property around the park, identify remains and find financial support, then they will excavate the ground in search of the barracks, said Nubia Wardford Polk, an archaeologist who has been leading the project and is a member of the Michigan Underground Railroad Exploratory Collective (MUREC), which is affiliated with the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History.

Currently, the only visible evidence of the camp and the 102nd’s contribution is a plaque on the Duffield Elementary School property, now called Bunche Preparatory Academy, adjacent to the park near Chene and Lafayette streets. 

Camp Ward is an important piece of the “various histories and land uses that connect to the African American presence here,” Wardford Polk added. 

Detroit was the last stop on the Underground Railroad, so the area had a cohesive Black community beginning in the 1830s, which included many of the men who would enlist. The Black Bottom neighborhood was established soon after, and the city remains nearly 80% Black. 

“The area has a vibrant and robust African American history that Black people can be very proud of,” Wardford Polk said. 

‘Truly freedom fighters’

Following the call for Black soldiers, groups of men came from Detroit, southern Michigan, and Canada, where many had gone for freedom after making it up the Underground Railroad. Among those who helped recruit soldiers was Sojourner Truth, an abolitionist who lived in Battle Creek at the time and helped raise money for the 102nd. 

The unit that formed included infantry and had artillery and cavalry elements. 

“These were the best people to give the guns to because they were going to be on a mission – they were truly freedom fighters,” Wardford Polk said. 

The contribution of Black Canadian troops who had fled the country to secure their freedom and returned to join the US Army needs to be underscored, said Barbara K. Smith, Ph. D MUREC’s co-founder and executive director, whose family lived in Ontario around the time. 

​​”Both Canadian and American men trained together and both had one main purpose: to win the war to end slavery and to experience ‘freedom’ for their loved ones,” she said. 

Historical documents describe the conditions at Camp Ward as difficult. The encampment held barebones barracks that leaked when it rained, but the men physically trained, learned to shoot, and prepared for war. The 102nd’s troops were compensated $10 per month, but $3 per month was deducted from their pay to cover uniform costs. 

“We still were not regarded as men, so it’s no surprise that we didn’t get the best stuff,” Rich said. But he added that the soldiers “weren’t looking for careers in the army – they were looking to end slavery.”

The nearly 900-man unit, called the Corps d’Afrique by the Detroit Free Press at the time, was commanded by white leadership and departed Detroit for Annapolis on March 28, 1864. It would fight throughout South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, and was the second line of defense at Port Royal, which Union forces had captured a few years earlier. The 102nd defeated Confederate troops in a series of battles and surprise attacks, quickly establishing their fighting prowess and value to the Union Army. 

Its final battle occurred ten days after the South had surrendered, and the force returned home before being disbanded on October 17, 1865. Several commanders were issued medals of honor, though Black troops were not, but their contribution was clear, Rich said. 

“A puzzle is not complete until it has all its pieces, and we did our part,” he said. “If it hadn’t been for the extra 209,000 Black troops [the North] would have lost and this would have been the Confederate states.”

Searching for Camp Ward

Campau Park has a few tires for football drills spread across its grass fields, some soccer goals sit at either end of the property, and kids play on a cluster of playground equipment. 

But beneath the ground is another world from another time. 

A non-invasive scan throughout the park property with ground-penetrating radar conducted by Tim Horsley, a Chicago-based archaeological geophysicist, identified the now-removed Clinton Street, a main street in Black Bottom. 

The site is challenging because there is so much underground debris from the city’s past ages, Horsley said. About a foot below the modern surface, the scan detected former park paths and the tops of many foundations, while the full foundations of houses on either side of Clinton, he said, became clear around three feet down. 

Evidence from insurance maps, the lack of basements, and remains from the houses strongly suggest that the street was lined with frame homes, Horsley said. The radar also found evidence of several block structures. 

Probing deeper, up to 16 feet, the scan identified evidence of the 19th-Century Duffield School, which still stands on an adjacent property, though the building is new. The search also likely detected former pathways that ran through a much older version of Campau Park. 

Beyond that, “clearly visible” walls and foundations from the Clinton Avenue Baptist Church and St. John Presbyterian Church showed up in scans.

Using the positioning of these features, and coordinating them on decades worth of maps, Horsley was able to determine the precise location where the barracks stood, though it was outside the area of the scan. 

The barrack structures may be completely gone because they were simple wood and may have been cleared. But pieces may remain, as may other features, like kitchens, ovens, chimneys, compact floors, cellars and bathrooms that could be easy to identify. 

“As is often the case in archaeology, you just don’t know until you look,” Horsley said. 

More may lie below or around the barracks. The area is called Black Bottom because of its dark, rich soils. Prior to the area’s military use, it was utilized by British and French colonizers for farming, and before that, it was inhabited by the indigenous Potawatomi tribe. 

“It is really interesting – the use of space and the earth, and how humans interact with the earth and leave their mark,” Wardford Polk said. “Sometimes we don’t even know what we’re living and breathing and working right on top of.”