Dark Whiteness: Benjamin Brawley and Chaucer

On the northern edge of the Boston Commons, at the intersection of its Freedom Trail and its Black Heritage Trail, stands a life-sized relief commemorating Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. While tour buses pause at the adjacent red light, microphoned guides repeat what walkers can read from the posted information: the white Colonel Shaw led the all-African-American Massachusetts 54th Regiment, the first of its kind, into the Civil War. Among the hundreds of thousands of men who served and died in the American Civil War, Shaw is singled out, not because he fought and not because he died, but because he granted military legitimacy to the brigade of African-American troops who were otherwise not allowed to fight in their own cause. Augustus Saint-Gauden’s monu-mental bronze centers Colonel Shaw on horseback, with his regiment members preceding and following. Although these men walking with the hero were cast with facial features identifying them as African-American, their skin color is indistinguishable from the military leader’s because his is darkened to the same hue by the bronze. In effect, Saint-Gaudens’ memorial does what no war and no legislation has been able to do: erase the color difference, not by making all the men white but by making all the men dark.