1st Rhode Island Infantry Regiment. Special Thanks to Floyd Guidry of Pelham, N.C. for sharing. The 1st Rhode Island Regiment was a Continental Army regiment during the American Revolutionary War. The 1st Rhode Island Regiment became known as the “Black Regiment” due to its allowing the recruitment of African Americans in 1778. This decision, designed to help fill dwindling ranks among the Rhode Island regiments, is regarded as having produced the first African American military regiment. This is incorrect, however, since its ranks were never exclusively African American. Instead blacks served in their own segregated companies within the larger integrated unit.
Marshal Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau was a French nobleman and general who played a major role in helping the Thirteen Colonies win independence during the American Revolution. General Rochambeau’s aide-de-camp, the Baron Ludwig Von Closen, recorded in his journal that none of the American units could compare to the spit and polish of the French army except the First Rhode Island, “and that regiment, which is three quarters negro and the rest native american, is the best dressed, the best under arms, and the most precise in its maneuvers.” #weloveblackhistory #revolutionarywar #nottaughtinschool
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