Long before Marcus Langley made his reputation as a concrete contractor in Sacramento, he made history as a member of the 14th U.S. Colored Heavy Artillery unit fighting for the Union during the Civil War.
The 14th was formed in North Carolina, his birthplace, in 1864. Langley, a 25-year-old who listed his occupation as a farmer, began a three-year enlistment on February 22, 1865, eventually transferring to Company F.
Langley’s unit performed garrison duty at New Berne and other places in North Carolina as General William Tecumseh Sherman’s Union forces closed in on Confederate troops led by Joe Johnston. On April 9, 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered at the Appomattox Courthouse to end the war. The U.S. 14th Colored Heavy Artillery unit was deactivated a month later.
Unable to find work in North Carolina, Langley brought his family west and arrived in Sacramento sometime around 1887. He worked for concrete contractors to learn the trade before starting his own successful business. On November 3, 1899, while laying sidewalks at 8th and H streets in downtown Sacramento, he suffered a massive stroke and died at age 64. He was described in a newspaper account as “an intelligent, honorable, upright, and religious man.”
Originally buried in the New Helvetia Cemetery near Sutter’s Fort, Langley’s grave was among those relocated to make room for an elementary school. His story is now told on a plaque in the New Helvetia section of the Sacramento City Cemetery.
CalVet pays tribute to Langley and to all of the Black military veterans interred there as well as at other burial grounds throughout the state as we celebrate Black History Month.
Some of their stories will be told during a Black History Month tour at the cemetery February 24. (See below for more information).
Guide Eric Bradner is a volunteer with the nonprofit Old City Cemetery Committee and also a longtime CalVet employee. He will tell visitors about the lives and experiences of many of those who are interred at City Cemetery, including Black veterans who are laid to rest there. The cemetery opened in 1849 to people of all ethnicities.
“There are plenty of Black family plots mixed in with German and Irish,” Bradner said. And surnames can be deceiving, he said. “We have only one O’Reilly family in the cemetery. I assumed they were Irish. They were Black.”
Bradner will talk about some of the Black veterans buried there who served in wars ranging from the Civil War to Vietnam. They include:
- Robert Fletcher, born in Jamaica, served in the Union Navy. He became a physician and died in Sacramento in 1922.
- William H. Guinn, a barber in Sacramento for 50 years, founded the local Zouaves Black militia out of his barbershop in Sacramento. They became a precision marching unit that participated in Fourth of July and Juneteenth celebrations. He died in 1909.
- Cornelius Peck was a sergeant in the 1st United States Colored Infantry Regiment, predecessor to the Buffalo Soldiers, during the Civil War. He died in 1897.
- Beverly Johnson, who died in 1937, wasn’t a veteran, but worked as a porter on a train that moved military troops. The “Pioneer Class” of 1895, the first class to graduate after four full years at Stanford, included only a handful of students of Asian heritage, and just one Black student, Beverly Johnson’s son, Ernest Johnson.
- World War II veteran Robert Jerold Olivia was a second lieutenant in the Army Air Force’s famed Tuskegee Airmen. He died in 2012.
The tour begins at 4 p.m. Tickets are priced at $10 per person, and proceeds benefit the nonprofit Old City Cemetery Committee. To buy tickets, visit historicoldcitycemetery.org/tours-events.
SOURCES: Old City Cemetery Committee records; Eric Bradner; William Burg, Sacramento historian.
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