A rare albumen carte-de-visite documenting an unidentified Black Civil War soldier in a dramatic acrobatic drumming pose, photographed by African American photographer James Wallace Black at his studio at 173 Washington Street, Boston, during the Civil War era. The image is among the most visually arresting Civil War drummer photographs known in the CDV format, and its Boston origin places it squarely within the geography of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment, the first Black regiment raised in the North, which trained at Camp Meigs in Readville just outside the city beginning in February 1863.

The subject lies fully extended on the studio floor, his body arched backward with one drumstick raised high overhead in mid-strike, his raised arm obscuring his face entirely. He wears a dark jacket with white cuffs visible at the wrists, light trousers, and leather shoes. The large military-style rope-tensioned drum has a dark shell and white tension cords consistent with Civil War field drums of the period.

The 54th Massachusetts counted at least three documented Black drummers whose CDVs are known: Alexander H. Johnson, called the original drummer boy by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw; David Miles Moore of Company H, detailed as drummer by Shaw's direct order; and Henry Monroe, who beat commands at Fort Wagner at age thirteen. The subject here cannot be identified, as the raised arm fully conceals the face, but the combination of a Black drummer, a military field drum, a theatrical studio pose, and a J.W. Black imprint is singular and historically charged.

The reverse bears Black's shield-format studio imprint with the address 173 Washington St., Boston, printed in the early single-color stamp style consistent with his Civil War-era mounts.