Article: Honoring a native daughter: Gulfport-born poet Natasha Trethewey revisits history to honor forgotten soldiers and elegize her own buried past in her Pulitzer Prize-winning book of poems Native Guard.(home pages: heritage matters)

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When Natasha Trethewey spent Fourth of July holidays as a child playing on Ship Island's bright, sandy beaches, she never realized that just off the island an unmarked Civil War cemetery lay submerged under the sparkling surface of the undulating Gulf. Years later, she began to learn more about these fallen soldiers--the second regiment of the Louisiana Native Guards, the first officially sanctioned African American unit for the Union Army--and the time they spent on Ship Island guarding prisoners at Fort Massachusetts.

While researching this little-known piece of Southern history, even combing through boxes of original documents ...

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