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Books on Blacks in the Military
Elevating The Race:
Theophilus G. Steward and The Making of An
African-American Civil
Religion, 1865-1924
Up from Handymen
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Colored Regulars in the United
States Army /
Chaplains of the United States
Army
The Buffalo Soldier: A Narrative of the Negro Cavalry in the
West /
Voices of the Buffalo Soldier
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Buffalo Soldiers originally
were members of the
U.S. 10th Cavalry Regiment of the
United States Army, formed on September 21, 1866 at
Fort Leavenworth,
Kansas. The nickname was given to the "Negro
Cavalry" by the
Native American tribes they
fought; the term eventually became synonymous with all of the
African-American regiments formed in 1866:
9th Cavalry Regiment /
10th Cavalry Regiment /
24th Infantry Regiment /
25th Infantry Regiment
Although several
African-American regiments were raised during the
Civil War to fight alongside the
Union Army (including the
54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry and the many
United States Colored Troops Regiments), the "Buffalo Soldiers" were
established by
Congress as the first peacetime all-black regiments in the regular
U.S. Army.
On September 6, 2005,
Mark Matthews, who was the oldest living Buffalo Soldier, died at
the age of 111. He was buried at
Arlington National Cemetery.
Sources disagree on how the
nickname "Buffalo Soldiers" began. According to the Buffalo Soldiers
National Museum, the name originated with the
Cheyenne warriors in the winter of 1867, the actual Cheyenne
translation being "Wild Buffalo." However, writer Walter Hill documented
the account of
Colonel Benjamin Grierson, who founded the 10th Cavalry regiment,
recalling an 1871 campaign against
Comanches. Hill attributed the origin of the name to the Comanche
due to Grierson's assertions. Some sources assert that the nickname was
given out of respect for the fierce fighting ability of the 10th
cavalry.
Other sources assert that Native Americans called the black cavalry
troops "buffalo soldiers" because of their dark curly hair, which
resembled a
buffalo's coat.
Still other sources point to a combination of both legends. The term
Buffalo Soldiers became a generic term for all African-American
soldiers. It is now used for U.S. Army units that trace their direct
lineage back to the 9th and 10th Cavalry, units whose service earned
them an honored place in U.S. history.
10th Cavalry Regiment (United States) #Buffalo Soldier name
In September 1867, Private John
Randall of Troop G of the 10th Cavalry Regiment was assigned to escort
two civilians on a hunting trip. The hunters suddenly became the hunted
when a band of 70 Cheyenne warriors swept down on them. The two
civilians quickly fell in the initial attack and Randall's horse was
shot out from beneath him. Randall managed to scramble to safety behind
a washout under the railroad tracks, where he fended off the attack with
only his pistol until help from the nearby camp arrived. The Indians
beat a hasty retreat, leaving behind 13 fallen warriors. Private Randall
suffered a gunshot wound to his shoulder and 11 lance wounds, but
recovered. The Cheyenne quickly spread word of this new type of soldier,
"who had fought like a cornered buffalo; who like a buffalo had suffered
wound after wound, yet had not died; and who like a buffalo had a thick
and shaggy mane of hair."—Wikipedia
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African-American
Patriots Consortium, Inc.
African-American
History Month
Schedule of Activities,
Spring 2003
Buffalo
Soldiers Day in Maryland
February
20, 2003
and
50th
Anniversary of Korean War (1950-1953)
February 23, 2003 &
Conference --April 16-19, 2003
April 16-19, 2003—The African Americans in the Korean War
Conference will convene at Morgan State University, Cold
Spring Lane and Hillen Road, Baltimore, Maryland. Scholars,
veterans, researchers and special guests will pay tribute to our
nation's African American veterans through panel sessions,
conversations with members, interpretive tours at historic
sites, exhibits at Morgan's new James E. Lewis Museum of Art,
seminars, benefits and services for Korean War veterans
displays, special awards recognition in Baltimore. The theme is "No
Longer Forgotten: African Americans in the Korean War,
1950-1953." The conference will focus on the role and
unique contributions of African Americans who served in the
United States Armed Forces during the Korean War.
The conference will conclude on Saturday
evening with a Banquet and tribute to the soldiers who are
"No longer forgotten."
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For Souvenir Booklet Ad Rates, call Gerald Eldridge
(410) 323-4606 or Jackie Lanier (410) 947-5601
For Tickets or Ads, call Clarence Davis (410) 366-0483
AAPC, Inc. / Post Office Box 33167 / Baltimore, MD
21218 / (410) 366-0483
For Korean War Conference 16-19 April 2003, contact
Dr. Charles Johnson, Jr., (443) 885-1796/3190 or Mrs. Constance
Burns (202) 685-2470 February 20, 2003—By Maryland Statute February 20, 2003 is
Buffalo Soldiers Day
in Maryland. African-American Patriots Consortium, Inc. (AAPC,
Inc.) will host the Annual Banquet at the Sheraton Barcelo in
Annapolis, MD. The 2003 Banquet promises to be historical in
that the 90-year-old daughter of CPL William O. Wilson
(awarded the Congressional medal of Honor in 1889), Ms. Anna
Jones, will present CPL Wilson's Congressional Medal of Honor
for perpetual display at the Reginald F. Lewis Maryland African
American Museum. In addition to the dinner-banquet, a VIP
reception with the CPL Wilson's family is planned.*
February 22, 2003—Seventeen years ago, the Maryland Legislative
Black Caucus, in support of African-American veterans, declared
and established the last Saturday in February as a day to
commemorate African-American defenders of America. This year's
celebration will conclude three years of recognition for the 50th
Anniversary of the Korean War (1950-1953), The theme for
this year's celebration is "Building A More Perfect
Union," to focus attention on the extraordinary
accomplishments of all Korean War Veterans, who for the fist
time in American's history, fought in legally integrated units.
These warriors created a national atmosphere which led to Brown
v. Board of Education and initiated the thrust for a diverse
society of equality and justice.*
*Supported by a Maryland Black Caucus
Foundation Grant
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* * *
Clarence
"Tiger" Davis is a member of the Maryland General
Assembly. He has been a State Delegate,
(Democrat,
District 45), representing East
Baltimore for almost 20 years.
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Mark
Matthews (August 7, 1894 – September 6, 2005)
was an American veteran of the Second World War and
a
Buffalo Soldier. Born in Alabama and growing up
in Ohio, Matthews joined the
10th Cavalry Regiment when he was only 15 years
old, after having been recruited at a
Lexington, Kentucky racetrack and having
documents forged so that he appeared to meet the
minimum age of 17. While stationed in Arizona, he
joined General
John J. Pershing's
Mexico expedition to hunt down Mexican bandit
Pancho Villa.
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He was later transferred to Virginia,
where he took care of
President
Roosevelt and
First Lady
Eleanor's horses and was a member of
the Buffalo Soldiers' drum and bugle
corps. In his late 40s, he served in
combat operations in the
South Pacific during World War II
and achieved the rank of
First Sergeant. He was noted as an
excellent marksman and horse showman.
Leaving the United States Army a few
years before it was integrated, Matthews
then took a job as a security guard in
Maryland, rising to the rank of chief of
the guards and then retiring in 1970.
After the war, he told stories of
military experiences and grew to
represent a symbol of the Buffalo
Soldiers. He met with
Bill Clinton and
Colin Powell in his later years, and
dedicated a barracks in Virginia in
honor of the Buffalo Soldiers. Having
experienced excellent health for most of
his life, Matthews died of
pneumonia at the age of 111 and was
buried in
Arlington National Cemetery. At the
time of his death, he was recognized as
the oldest living Buffalo Soldier as
well as the oldest man, and the
second-oldest person, in the District of
Columbia.—Wikipedia |
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Marker to Honor Graves
of African American Soldiers from the Civil War
The metal
plaque will be the result of a campaign by a local
Civil War re-enactor who serves in a U.S. Colored
Troops unit.
"I just wonder
why it took so long to get done," said Fred Johnson,
who spends his spare time as a sergeant in Battery
B, 2nd U.S. Colored Light Artillery, a re-creation
of an actual Civil War unit.
Johnson will be
on duty this weekend at the Cameron Art Museum for
its annual Civil War living history event, marking
the 146th anniversary of the Battle of Forks Road.
A Philadelphia native and a Korean War veteran who
retired to Wilmington in the 1990s, Johnson became
interested in the Civil War through studying his
family history
His great-great
grandfather, Peter Quomony, served in the U.S. Colored Troops
from 1863 to 1865. |
Another ancestor who died in the war is
buried in an unmarked grave at the New Bern National Cemetery.
Johnson said he became interested in the U.S.C.T. graves back in
2003, while touring the Wilmington cemetery, which opened in
1867. Thousands of Union dead from Fort Fisher and the
Wilmington campaign were reburied there.
Some 3,300 African-American
soldiers in two brigades served in this area, according to
Fonvielle. During the assault on Fort Fisher, they held a line
at Kure Beach to prevent Confederate forces from relieving the
fort. Later, they formed the vanguard on the east bank of the
Cape Fear River as Gen. Alfred Terry's Union forces advanced
on Wilmington.
Many of these Colored
Troops were North Carolinians and ex-slaves, Fonvielle said. One
of their regiments, the 37th, included men from New Hanover and
Brunswick counties. The troops served as occupation forces in
this area after the war, and many of the soldiers stayed on
after their discharges.
"Postwar Wilmington was a
mecca for African-Americans," Fonvielle said. Many of these
resident veterans were buried at the National Cemetery, well
into the 1900s. Records identified 92 U.S. Colored Troops buried
at Wilmington National Cemetery. However, further research by
Bill Jayne, former cemetery development director with the
National Cemetery Administration, indicated that many more
bodies were moved to the cemetery between 1867 and 1882—perhaps
as many as 500 in all.— StarNewsOnline
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History of Buffalo Soldiers /
Bob Marley—Buffalo
Soldier
/
92nd Infantry Division Buffalo Soldiers /
For Love of Liberty
"Buffalo
Soldier" is a reggae song co-written by Bob Marley
and Noel G. "King Sporty" Williams from Marley's
final recording sessions in 1980. It did not appear
on record until the 1983 posthumous release of
Confrontation, when it became a big hit and one of
Marley's best-known songs. The title and lyrics
refer to the black U.S. cavalry regiments, known as
"Buffalo Soldiers", that fought in the Indian Wars
after 1866. Marley likened their fight to a fight
for survival, and recasts it as a symbol of black
resistance
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History! Army Selects First Black Woman
As Two Star General—October 3,
2011—Marcia Anderson,
born 1958, became the first
African-American woman given a second
star as a general in the U.S. Army
during a ceremony at Fort Knox. It’s a
day, Anderson said, that black soldiers
who fought during the Civil War or the
Tuskegee Airmen could never have
imagined. . . . Anderson, who will leave
her post as deputy commanding general of
the Human Resources Command at Fort Knox
on Friday, received the promotion after
a three-decade long military career. She
is moving to the office of the chief of
the U.S. Army Reserve in Washington,
D.C.
Anderson’s father, Rudy Mahan of Beloit,
Wis., served in the U.S. Army Air Force
during World War II, but never got to
fulfill his dream of flying bombers. He
drove trucks instead. It’s something
Anderson attributes to the narrow
options available to blacks at the time.
. . . Her military career started almost
by accident. When she was a student at
Creighton University in Omaha, Neb.,
Anderson signed up for ROTC after being
told the “military science” course would
fill her science requirement. . . . |
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She stayed with
the military, fulfilling her eight year commitment
before deciding to re-enlist in the reserves.
Anderson, an East St. Louis, Ill., native, said she
was a captain, working on training soldiers “just
off the street,” when it occurred to her it was a
job she enjoyed and wanted to keep doing. . . . The
military promoted Anderson periodically and, when
she became a brigadier general, Anderson became the
highest-ranking African-American woman in the Army.
She arrived at Fort Knox about a year ago to work on
combining the Army’s Human Resources Command under
one roof from stations in Richmond, Va., St. Louis
and Indianapolis.— NewsOne
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1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus
Created
By Charles C. Mann
I’m
a big fan of Charles Mann’s previous
book
1491:
New Revelations of the Americas Before
Columbus, in which he
provides a sweeping and provocative
examination of North and South America
prior to the arrival of Christopher
Columbus. It’s exhaustively researched
but so wonderfully written that it’s
anything but exhausting to read. With
his follow-up,
1493, Mann has taken it to a
new, truly global level. Building on the
groundbreaking work of Alfred Crosby
(author of
The Columbian Exchange and, I’m
proud to say, a fellow Nantucketer),
Mann has written nothing less than the
story of our world: how a planet of what
were once several autonomous continents
is quickly becoming a single,
“globalized” entity.
Mann not only talked to countless
scientists and researchers; he visited
the places he writes about, and as a
consequence, the book has a marvelously
wide-ranging yet personal feel as we
follow Mann from one far-flung corner of
the world to the next. And always, the
prose is masterful. In telling the
improbable story of how Spanish and
Chinese cultures collided in the
Philippines in the sixteenth century, he
takes us to the island of Mindoro whose
“southern coast consists of a number of
small bays, one next to another like
tooth marks in an apple.” We learn how
the spread of malaria, the potato,
tobacco, guano, rubber plants, and sugar
cane have disrupted and convulsed the
planet and will continue to do so until
we are finally living on one integrated
or at least close-to-integrated Earth.
Whether or not the human instigators of
all this remarkable change will survive
the process they helped to initiate more
than five hundred years ago remains,
Mann suggests in this monumental and
revelatory book, an open question. |
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Ratification
The People Debate the Constitution,
1787-1788
By Pauline Maier
A notable historian
of the early republic, Maier devoted a
decade to studying the immense
documentation of the ratification of the
Constitution. Scholars might approach
her book’s footnotes first, but history
fans who delve into her narrative will
meet delegates to the state conventions
whom most history books, absorbed with
the Founders, have relegated to
obscurity. Yet, prominent in their local
counties and towns, they influenced a
convention’s decision to accept or
reject the Constitution. Their
biographies and democratic credentials
emerge in Maier’s accounts of their
elections to a convention, the political
attitudes they carried to the conclave,
and their declamations from the floor.
The latter expressed opponents’
objections to provisions of the
Constitution, some of which seem
anachronistic (election regulation
raised hackles) and some of which are
thoroughly contemporary (the power to
tax individuals directly). Ripostes from
proponents, the Federalists, animate the
great detail Maier provides, as does her
recounting how one state convention’s
verdict affected another’s. Displaying
the grudging grassroots blessing the
Constitution originally received, Maier
eruditely yet accessibly revives a
neglected but critical passage in
American history.—Booklist |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
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____ 2005
Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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update 6 April 2010
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