This is not about retroactively assigning modern identities or reshaping the past to fit contemporary frameworks. It is about acknowledging what the records themselves reveal. Civil War historians know well that military documents often flatten race, erase origin, and simplify identity. Butler’s story fits squarely within that established scholarship. What makes it notable is that it unfolds here, in Rhode Island.

State histories tend to emphasize regiments, battles and leadership. Far less attention is given to the individual enlisted men whose lives complicate our assumptions about who served and why. Butler’s story adds texture to Rhode Island’s Civil War narrative by reminding us that migration, race and service were already intertwined long before the 20th century.

The 250th anniversary of the United States invites reflection, not revisionism. Major commemorations have always prompted historians to revisit archives, ask new questions, and consider whose experiences were overlooked. But commemoration is also, at its best, an act of recognition. To name and remember people of color who lived, labored and served in earlier generations is not to diminish the past – it is to honor it more fully. Their lives are not footnotes to history; they are part of its foundation.

We often say that history is written by those who leave records. But it is also shaped by how carefully we read those records – and whether we are willing to notice the irregularities, the misspellings, the lives that don’t quite fit our expectations.

Honoring Amos Butler is not about elevating one person above others. It is about acknowledging that the American story, and Rhode Island’s story within it, has always been broader and more diverse than the version many of us inherited.

At 250 years, we have an opportunity not only to look back, but to commemorate those whose presence affirms that people of color have always been here – living, serving and shaping this country in ways we are only beginning to fully recognize.

Marta V. Martínez is the executive director of Rhode Island Latino Arts. She serves on the RI250 Commission. Martínez is producing a first-person monologue of Amos (Ramos) Butler, which will be presented as part of the RI250 celebration.