Christian A. Fleetwood

(1840-1914)

African-American Sergeant Major Christian Fleetwood was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for heroism on the field of battle at Chaffin's Farm, September 29, 1864. He was twenty-three. Born a free man in Baltimore, he traveled to Liberia as a youth and later graduated from Ashmun Institute in Oxford, Pennsylvania, (later Lincoln University).

Fleetwood was an editor, a musician, and a government officer. After the war, he continued his interest in military affairs, organizing in 1887 a battalion of the District of Columbia National Guard, and in 1888, the Washington, D.C., Colored High School Cadet Corps. At Fleetwood's funeral in 1914, Daniel Murray was an honorary pallbearer.