The Flag Never Touched the Ground: America’’s Brave Black Regiment in Battle

The story of an all-black regiment’s assault on the impregnable Fort Wagner in the Civil War, an act of extraordinary courage that changed hearts and minds in America for ever

THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR. 1863.

On a cold beach in South Carolina, the soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment are marching into battle. Their mission: to capture the impregnable Fort Wagner. The odds are heavily against them, and the stakes could not be higher - they are one of the first all-Black regiments in the Union Army, and all of America is watching them.

Among their ranks is William Harvey Carney. A former enslaved man who escaped to the North, he knows what a precious thing freedom is. So when the bugle sounds, and the regimental flag is hoisted high, William charges towards the guns.

Kekla Magoon is the author of many novels and nonfiction books for young readers, including The Season of Styx Malone, The Rock and the River, How It Went Down, and the Robyn Hoodlum Adventure series. She has received the Margaret A. Edwards Award, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, the John Steptoe New Talent Award, three Coretta Scott King Honors, the Walter Award Honor, an NAACP Image Award, and been long listed for the National Book Award.

Amerigo Pinelli lives in the heart of the city of Naples, Italy, among narrow streets and old churches. A long time ago, when he was a child, he met a pencil, and from that moment on he started to play, joke, fight, and make peace with it.