The Families' Civil War : Black Soldiers and the Fight for Racial Justice Holly A. Pinheiro Jr. This book tells the stories of freeborn northern African Americans in Philadelphia struggling to maintain families while fighting against racial discrimination from 1850 to the 1910s. Civil War military service worsened their already difficult circumstances due to its negative effects on their finances, living situations, minds, and bodies. At least 79,000 African American served in northern USCT regiments. A number of them, including most of the USCT veterans examined here, remained in the North and comprised a sizeable population of racial minorities living outside of the former Confederacy. In The Families' Civil War, Pinheiro provides a compelling account of the lives of USCT soldiers and their entire families, but also argues that Civil War was one battle in a longer war for racial justice. Black History Month