Black Dockworkers, Virginia Hundreds of thousands of able-bodied free blacks and runaways cleared forests, built roads, erected bridges, constructed fortifications, and transported supplies for the U.S. Army. Their labor became indispensable to the war effort, and as one Northerner remembered, “The truth was we never could get enough of them.” These men unloaded Union ships at an unnamed Virginia dock.

National Archives photo no. 111-B-400.