Explanation: In the US Civil War, Colonel Robert Shaw, a white man, accepted the command of the first Black unit of the US Army. He died leading an assault on Confederate fortifications in 1863. Most of his unit survived, and despite the failure of the attack, it galvanized Union support for Black troops in the Civil War.
The Confederates buried him in a mass grave with the soldiers he led, seeing it as an insult. Colonel Shaw's father rebuffed any attempt to exhume Colonel Shaw's body and bury it separately from the Black troops he led, seeing it as emblematic of the collective sacrifice and unity that the Colonel had fought to uphold in life.