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Emancipation & Betrayal · 1866–1944

Buffalo Soldiers:
Fighting for a Country That Wouldn't Fight for Them

After the Civil War, Congress created six all-Black Army regiments — the 9th and 10th Cavalry, the 24th and 25th Infantry — to serve on the Western frontier. They served under white officers, received inferior equipment, and were paid the same as white soldiers while eating at separate tables. The Lakota Sioux called them 'Buffalo Soldiers' — a name they adopted with pride. They had the lowest desertion rate in the Army, some of the highest Medal of Honor counts, and were barred from most military posts in the East. Their service was used to justify Jim Crow ('they serve, therefore the system is fair') and ignored when it was inconvenient.

Established
1866, Congressional Army Reorganization Act
Service
Western frontier, Spanish-American War, WWI, WWII
Irony
Fought to suppress Indigenous peoples for a government that excluded them
The Central Argument

The Buffalo Soldiers embody the central contradiction of Black military service in America: exceptional performance in defense of a nation that denied them citizenship. They won 23 Medals of Honor. They built roads, guarded national parks, escorted mail and railroad crews, and fought in Cuba alongside Theodore Roosevelt — who later, as President, dishonorably discharged 167 of their colleagues without trial after the Brownsville Affair. Their service was real. The citizenship it was supposed to earn was perpetually deferred.

The Frontier Era · 1866–1898
01
1866–1890

The Western Frontier: Service Under Contradiction

Kansas · Texas · New Mexico · Arizona
23
Medals of Honor awarded to Buffalo Soldiers
Lowest
Desertion rate in the U.S. Army

The Buffalo Soldiers served on the Western frontier enforcing U.S. government policy against Indigenous nations — fighting for a government that simultaneously denied them the rights of citizens. Many had been enslaved. Some Indigenous peoples they faced had harbored escaped slaves and were fighting for their own sovereignty. The moral complexity of this position was not lost on the soldiers or the people they fought. The 9th and 10th Cavalry were stationed in the most dangerous postings on the frontier, given older weapons and fewer supplies than white units, and — in between campaigns — used as manual labor to build the infrastructure of the expanding West.

Despite these conditions, the Buffalo Soldiers compiled an exceptional service record. Their low desertion rate (compared to 25–33% in white units) reflected both the lack of options available to Black men in civilian life and a fierce unit cohesion. Several went on to become the first Black officers in the regular Army.

02
1898–1906

Cuba, San Juan Hill, and the Brownsville Betrayal

Cuba · Brownsville, Texas

In the Spanish-American War, the 9th and 10th Cavalry fought alongside Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders at San Juan Hill. Multiple participants and correspondents — including Roosevelt himself, initially — acknowledged that the Buffalo Soldiers' charge had saved the Rough Riders from being pinned down. By the time Roosevelt wrote his account for publication, the Buffalo Soldiers had been largely written out. In 1906, after a shooting incident in Brownsville, Texas, in which townspeople were killed and local soldiers were blamed, Roosevelt dishonorably discharged all 167 Black soldiers of the 25th Infantry without trial, stripping them of their pensions and their right to future federal employment. Most historians now believe the soldiers were innocent. In 1972, Congress cleared their records posthumously — 66 years later.

"It was the Colored Infantry who saved us. I don't know what we would have done without the Tenth Cavalry."

— Theodore Roosevelt, initial account of San Juan Hill, 1898 — later revised in his memoir
The Longer Chain

Black military service never produced the citizenship it was promised.

From the Buffalo Soldiers to the Harlem Hellfighters to WWII veterans denied GI Bill benefits, Black military service was consistently used to argue that the system was fair while the system remained unfair.

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