Who were the Buffalo Soldiers?

Josh and Chuck dive into history today to tell the story of the Buffalo Soldiers. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of five
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w. Action, Jackson Bryant, right, sure,
and then there's Jerry over there, the flash that makes

(00:22):
this stuff. You shure, that's right. If there's one thing
people say to me is how much I'm like Carl
Weathers and how speedy Jerry is. Why why do I
want to say that Carl Weathers had one arm in Action? Jackson?
I don't think that was the case. Has he ever

(00:43):
had one arm in any of his Oh? I think
his arm gets pulled off in Predator? Okay, then I'm
complaining the two. It sounds about right. I saw Predator,
but just once, like you know, when it came out.
I saw it within the last twelve months. Yeah, I
think it's even better now has a grown up. Oh yeah, yeah,
I can really feel the tension like you're in the

(01:03):
jungle there with everybody. It's amazing. Have you been singing
the Buffalo Soldier song like constantly in her head? Despite
my best efforts, I can't stop. Well, I looked up
the lyrics because I was just you know, I know
some of them, Uh, but I wanted to kind of
see where exactly he was probably talking about the soldiers,
and there were some kind of on the nose references.

(01:26):
Jerry mentioned San Juan mentioned San Juan. What else you know?
Fighting for America, fighting on arrival, fighting for survival. Always
I always got it wrong though. I thought he said
dreadlock rock star. No, he says dreadlock Rosta. I know.
I learned that today, Dreadlock rock star. I've been seeing well.
I thought he was talking about himself. That's hilarious. I
was singing it wrong. I mean he was singing about himself. No,

(01:49):
he's singing about the Buffalo soldiers. They weren't Rosta's. I
guess some of them could have been. Maybe we'll find out. Anyway.
I've been singing for forty years, Dreadlock rock star. That's
pretty good, like a dumb dumb Oh, that's all right.
It's pretty close, man, And it still makes sense. The
ones that don't make sense are the hilarious ones that

(02:09):
just seems like a very like, I don't know, white
college kid thing to sing dread like rock star, dreadlock. Yeah,
when you first started listening to Bob Marley. Okay, you're ready,
I'm ready. So we're talking Buffalo Soldiers. And then it
is not just a Bob Marley song. It's if anything,
that Bob Marley song is kind of like a his
story history lesson, which is kind of interesting. Um, but

(02:34):
the Buffalo Soldiers was the name of some all black
regiments and then eventually all black soldiers in the United
States fighting in the United States military. That's right from
right after the Civil War all the way up until
I think nineteen fifty one, when the last all black
regiment was disbanded and the military was impracticed desegregated. Yeah,

(02:58):
but when did you say that happen? I think nineteen
fifty one. Um, But they did not take on that
natal post Civil Civil War, right, And at first it
wasn't a name that they took on themselves. It was
a name that was given to them. And there's a
lot of dispute over where it came from, who's the
first to use it, that kind of stuff. But it's
a really interesting history and it's not just an interesting

(03:21):
like military history. There's a lot of like terrible tragic
irony involved. There's, um, there's this kind of overarching theme
where you can make a case that the Buffalo Soldiers
are the ones who actually paved the way for desegregation
throughout the entire United States. You can trace a direct

(03:42):
line from their service to desegregation. It's pretty pretty amazing stuff.
And yet there's still this kind of um cloud that
hangs over them historically because of one of the things
that they participated in, which was the genocide of Native
Americans at the behest of the white US government, right
because they were trying to earn a place in white

(04:06):
America and gained some status and prestige, and white America
was like, we want you to do something for us first,
and we'll still probably not grant you that respect. Yeah,
which is kind of par for the course from what
I understand as far as military service and being black
in America goes UM. In the Battle of New Orleans,

(04:27):
the Black Phalanx, this black regiment ended up pretty cool name. Yeah,
it really is. Um. They ended up basically winning the
battle UM against the British at the Battle of New Orleans,
which actually came ironically after the end of the War
of eighteen twelve, but it was still a decisive battle
UM and they had been Mustard, a lot of them

(04:48):
from local plantations by Andrew Jackson, and Jackson had promised
them their freedom if they came and fought in one.
And they came and fought in one and Jackson said, yes,
are you have to go back to your plantations? I
was lying, yeah, and that's not a surprise. Yeah, but um,
imagine that And that was not the first time that
that had happened to him. That was pretty much par

(05:09):
for the course. While they were enslaved. They would be
promised freedom for fighting and then no, after the fact,
that's just not that's not gonna happen. Yeah. And you know,
like we said, the Buffalo soldiers post Civil War were
and we'll we'll get to um like their formal designation
and their regiments and stuff like that. But there had

(05:29):
been uh individuals enlisted in all the way back to
the Revolutionary War. There were you know, black individuals that
would go and fight, but they just weren't grouped in
their own regiments. The first one was the Black Regiment
in Rhode Island. I think. Yeah, in the Revolutionary War,
didn't we talk about them in a short stuff about

(05:52):
um the Black Revolutionary war fighters? And they moved up
to Nova Scotia. We definitely did. So the Grabster put
this a lot of this together for us, which was
a big help. And it's important to look at what
was going on after the Civil War and this unique
set of circumstances that were created that kind of led

(06:14):
to these regiments being formed, which was about twelve thousand
maybe a little bit more black veteran soldiers from the
Civil War all of a sudden needed jobs and they
were soldiers at this point, so they were like, you know,
I'll keep doing this. This could be my career. Like
give us a job in reconstruction in the South, they

(06:35):
needed federal troops. Federal troops, well, yes, it was probably
not a good idea to send black troops for to
oversee reconstruction, so to occupy the South, can you imagine
it would not have been So they sent white troops
of course, but that created a vacuum elsewhere where they
could use and utilize these black troops. Um, there were

(06:56):
four million slaves that were now free and uh ed
hazard a guess that you know, let's say a million
one and a half million of these were adult males
that were ready to go and serve and fight. If
need be. And then we were going west, and we
knew that there were Native Americans out there that we're
not going to go easily. There was Mexico looming on

(07:18):
the horizon as potential conflict. And because they were sending
white soldiers to the south, Uh, they needed people to
go out west and kind of you know, keep the
peace in a way and take care of business in
another way, or to remove Native Americans forcibly from their
ancestral lands. That's right. So um on July sixty six,

(07:40):
Congress did something really surprising. They said, we've got all
these kind of expansionist ideas. We've got the South that
we need to occupy. We need a bigger army. We're
going to raise a huge peace time army. And not
only that, we're going to form some all black regiments.
Were going to let black people um enlist for the

(08:01):
first time ever as peace time soldiers. Yeah, and partially
because they just needed people, and partially because they thought
these black veterans that fought in the Civil War for
the Union they should be rewarded with jobs. Exactly. So,
for the first time, the federal government didn't reneg on
the offer of something better. After having served and fought

(08:22):
as a soldier. So there's a big deal and just
having you know, allowing soldiers, black soldiers to enlist during
peace time, but the fact that they could enlistment that
they could become officers as well, which meant West Point
was open to black UM soldiers for the first time,
which was a huge deal UM in eighteen So in

(08:44):
eighteen sixty six is when they expanded the army. Just
a few years later they wanted to shrink the army
a little bit, so they consolidated a bunch of regiments
down to five and the original I think it was
six uh for infantry and to cavalry were now shrunk

(09:04):
down and combined into the ninth Cavalry, the tenth Cavalry.
I'm saying both cavalry and cavalry, just covering all your bases,
even though only one of them is correct in this cavalry, uh,
the infantry in the infantry right. And the fact that
they survived this downsizing of the army because Congress want
we need a big army. It's too big, let's get

(09:26):
rid of some some soldiers. The fact that all black
regiments survived is really miraculous because in that downsizing decree
a few years later. It wasn't um. It wasn't included,
like and we still need to keep black regiments in
intact um And William two comes to Sherman was no
great friend to the black man by any stretch of

(09:48):
the imagination. And he was in charge of downsizing these troops.
And yet he knew enough that there were still congress people,
congressmen in Congress who had created the black regiments in
the first place. They would not be very happy if
he just dissolved them, so he kept him in tech
and actually just went from six to four. Yeah, and
but it's interesting because it was peacetime. You know. During wartime,

(10:11):
especially back then, it was really pretty easy to get
people to sign up and volunteer and fight for whatever
side they were on. But in peace time they found
that they could get the cream of the crop of
black soldiers because they didn't have as much opportunity, so
they could really be picky and get these really like
super capable fighters, whereas on the other side, uh, during

(10:34):
peace time, it was harder to get white soldiers that
were as capable because they had much more opportunities to
do other things beyond like hey, I got nothing going
on outside up for the army, right exactly. And in
the army to um, there's a lot of mythologizing about, um,
you know, how the black regiments were treated. It related
to white regiments as well, and it seems like, um,

(10:55):
some historians have shown if you trace the supply lines,
the black bagment's got the same shoddy and then increasingly
better supplies as the white regiments at the same time.
And in the army you had just opportunities, um that
just weren't afforded to you outside, like the opportunity to
make money, you know, and have savings and a pension, um,

(11:19):
things that you could you could kind of bank on
the future with that. That was just not part of
of the black experience of black men back then. You know.
I think that's a very robust set up in more, Oh,
we're still doing set up. No, let's beyond like That's
why I said and more. But I think what I'm

(11:39):
trying to say is it's a great time for a break. Okay, yeah, yeah,
all right, we'll be right back and we'll talk a
little bit about how this name came to be right
after this. So there's a lot in here about how

(12:12):
this name came to be, right, But I think we
condense it um. We can condense it to just a
couple of versions, one of which was that the name
may have come from the Native Americans as sort of
an honor, like they're brave and they fight, They're like fierce,
like the buffalo and like Sasha fierce. I don't know

(12:35):
what that is. That's like Beyonce's weird alias. Why do stars,
when you get to this enormous, huge point, decided to
create an alter ego? That's always not good? Chris Gaines, Yes,
learn the lesson from Chris Gaines. Yeah, who else has
done that? It doesn't matter, Chris, Some of them have worked.
Zikky Starda certainly worked. Captain Fantastic worked fine. Chris Gaines,

(12:59):
N it's all though, No, I agree, I didn't know
that very short lived really and what was the persona
was it? I guess she was fierce, so I don't know.
I just heard her name a couple of times. Beyonce's
fear though, right right, you don't need an alter ego, Beyonce.
You're fierce enough. You don't want to go too much fiercer.
You should be her manager should you know all the

(13:22):
right moves. So that is that is one of the
stories was that it was honor, a name of honor
from the Native Americans. But this to me sounds like
it might have been just something kind of cooked up
in history books or it just kind of converted into that.
Maybe the Smithsonian Museum of African American History says, yeah,

(13:43):
that stands as popular lore. That's one um example. Another
is basically there's two competing ones, and that is that
the Native Americans did give this name to the black soldiers,
but that they were referring to the woolyness of the
black soldiers hair compared to white soldier's hair, and that
if you look between the horns of a buffalo, that

(14:04):
kind of like to pay almost that the buffalo is
wearing bears of vague resemblance to it, and that that's
where it initially came from. Yeah, and there's like direct
evidence from letters and stuff of the time of this
um whether or not it was true or not. It
was it was at least down in print as being
the reason, but we don't know for sure, uh, And
we don't know for sure how they felt about the

(14:28):
name other than it seems like as time went on,
they kind of embraced the name as a designation UM.
And in one case there was one troop that did
use a bison on a patch on their uniform, but
then bison were used on other patches on uniforms of
white soldiers too. I think it was strictly Black regiments really,
just later ones that weren't the ninth That that was

(14:52):
my interpretation, okay, but but yeah, by the time I
think nineteen eleven is when that first patch appears. But
so by the time teen eleven rolls around, the Black
regiments had UM had totally like taken on Buffalo soldiers
a name of honor. Yeah, and and Ed points out,
I think it's fair. It's easy now in to look
back at UM two uh, two ethnic groups that were

(15:17):
you know, kept under the thumb of the white man
and say that, oh, you know, the Native Americans respected
them as fierce fighters, and the Black soldiers respected the
Native Americans. But that's probably retroactive revisionist history, because you know,
there were plenty of cases where the Buffalo soldiers referred

(15:37):
to them as you know, savages, and one case of
one soldier you know, going as a costume party, dressed
up and I guess what you would call red face,
Oh yeah, and uh so, yeah, it seems like that's
sort of cooked up these days, like they really had
much respect for one another during their battles. But I
don't know if that's a case. No, but you can

(15:58):
understand how that would how people would want to do that,
you know, because I mean, the sending African American soldiers
out to remove Native Americans from their land with violence
at the behest of white people. It's not a good story. No,
it's a terrible story. Yeah, it takes a bad story

(16:20):
makes it worse, and then at the same time, um,
there's a real silver lining to it. There's that good
story that like black soldiers served as heroes for the
black community in America as a whole at a time
when they really needed some black heroes, you know, and
the Jim Crow South was really starting to to solidify. Um,
So it's not like an all bad story, but it's

(16:42):
definitely not an all good story either. So people want
like a nice storybook ending for sure, which is surely
where that came from. I think. So, so should we
talk a little bit about, um what they did? Yeah, yeah,
when they were um first assembled in I think that
late to mid eighteen sixties. Um, they were almost immediately

(17:05):
moved out to the frontier Kansas and Texas, New Mexico, UM,
and pushing further and further west as their work was
increasingly successful. Yeah, and usually under the command of white officers. UM.
It was not looked at as some great assignment if
you were a white officer, uh, to go west and

(17:26):
command one of the Buffalo Soldier regiments. Yeah, it would
have been like being stationed in Alaska or something like that.
Alaska is great. Although some some white commanding officers did
rise to the occasion, yeah, and had a lot of
great things to say about the soldiers too. Some of
them definitely did not rise to the occasion and actually
went the other way, right, you know. Yeah, and you

(17:48):
mentioned West Point. This was a huge deal because, like
you said, now, these young men could go attend West
Point and come out officers upon entry into the army. Uh.
There were quite a few cases. One was a man
named Henry Flipper. He was the first black graduate of
West Point in eighteen seventy seven, came out as second

(18:09):
lieutenant in the tenth Cavy Cavalry and was basically set
up with a court martial. There was a case where
there was some He was put in charge of a
quartermaster safe to like guard it basically and take charge
of it. Money becomes missing, he uh kind of freaks
out and lies about it. It's kind of all evidence

(18:31):
pointing to the fact that he didn't take the money,
but he did lie about. How did he went? What
did he lie about? Thinks I couldn't I think that
the initial money was missing at all. Maybe I'm not
really sure, but it looks like it was a set up.
He was acquitted of the main charge even back then,
and was found guilty of an added charge of conduct
unbecoming of an officer right uh and was dismissed from

(18:53):
the army, which even back then was an overblown sentence
compared to the similar charges of white officers right into
the army at the time. He could have gotten his
discharge changed to honorable discharge, but the Army apparently didn't
have any procedure to do that, so it was up
to the commander in chief, Chester A. Arthur Uh to
decide yea or nay, And he just for he just

(19:16):
let it pass by. But he so um lieutenant. Was
he a lieutenant second lieutenant second lieutenant Flipper went to
his grave saying that he was innocent, and um he
In the nineties, Bill Clinton finally pardoned him. He did,
and Clinton that ghoul ordered him exhumed and reburied with

(19:40):
full military honors. But they suspect that Clinton just wanted
to see what the body looked like. Come on, he said,
let's do this, right. Yeah, he probably did say that.
So there were another couple of cases, John Hanks, Alexander
and Charles Young. Uh, they were West Point grads early on.

(20:00):
They went on to lead these regiments. And uh, that's
not to say that at West Point it was smooth Salem.
Of course. You know, they had a very hard time
there and still persevered extraordinarily. Um points out that in
the Tuskegee Airman Episode two, I think we talked about
how the um, those guys who went through West Point

(20:21):
had or the military academies had just an awful time
of it too. I mean that happened. I mean it
probably still happens to some degree. But I mean I
read The Lords of Discipline. I did too, and saw
the movie. I don't know if I saw the movie
or not, and that was what year was that set
that was? It's probably sixties, wasn't. I don't know what

(20:41):
was the problem with that guy. He just was soft
or something, wouldn't it he like was was um ah,
he had feelings, you know, I don't remember. I haven't
seen it in a long time. But um, that was
the Citadel, not West Point, which is Navy, I think, right,
Air Force Marines. The Citadel is National Guard. No cub Scouts, Yes,

(21:07):
it was cub Scouts. Citadel was cub Scouts where the break.
So uh, these regiments had about a thousand troops and officers.
But um, they were constantly under supplied. And like you
said earlier, it's there's no evidence that they were intentionally undersupplied. No,

(21:28):
but it's a myth that they were. Yeah, but kind
of everyone out west was because it takes a long
time to get stuff out there, and a lot of
those old Civil War weapons and equipment were pretty shoddy anyway. Yeah. Plus,
I mean it's not really easy to come by water
in the New Mexico desert or you're fighting the Cheyenne
or the Apache, um like, so you have horses that
need water too, because you're a cavalry unit. Um, and

(21:52):
the horses were breaking down. It was a really bad
time as they were moving further and further west. Because
we tend to think of the United States military like
in the terms of today, this just incredibly well oiled,
logistical juggernaut. That was not the case after the Civil War.
As a matter of fact, until I believe the Spanish

(22:12):
American War, the United States military was looked upon internationally
is kind of like a not not the best around,
certainly not the best equipped the logistics. We didn't have
that kind of stuff down. You didn't hear it from me,
but right exactly. But um, and this was you know,
the army that these guys were enlisted in, So they

(22:36):
were dealing with an army that was not was finding
its feet and then also on the frontier of the
United States at a time when they're protecting the people
building the railroads. So there's not even the railroads out
there yet. One of their jobs was to protect railroad workers,
mail carriers, people who were on trattle drives. Yeah, um,

(22:58):
these were the jobs they were asked with. Uh. Well,
they were also fighting, like we said, in what was
known as the Indian Wars, uh, including some of the
some of the big ones. I think we need to
do a big old episode on the any wars. Yeah,
let's do it. Wounded Knee, the White River War. Yeah,
I've never heard of that one. I looked it up.

(23:18):
The war is not a term for most of these.
Should be massacre now, it should be straight up massacres. Yeah.
Although here's the other thing too, This is really easy
for guys like us to do, especially in retrospect, is
um what's called like mythologizing the noble savage right where
the where we kind of make it seem like the

(23:38):
Indians were just the people who, you know, kind of
meekly accepted their fate and we're just rolled over by
the US government through this westward expansion. That's not the case.
In almost every case, the further west we got, the
fears of the fighting got, they pushed back. For sure.
They engaged in massacres that included killing women and children

(24:02):
and non combatants on both sides did so. It's not
like the Native Americans were just innocent of of bloodshed.
But it's important to remember that they were. They were
defending their lands from invaders. They were the insurgents, and
that so there's like a certain amount of um moral

(24:23):
higher ground that they afforded just for being in that position,
you know. But it's just that's the thing. That's why
I've always been fascinated about histories, Like it's never just
you know, black and white. Yeah, there's so much nuance
that gets overlooked, especially if you were raised in like
you know, public schools in America. Exactly, not a lot
of nuance going up right, and white people swooped in

(24:45):
and everything was great, exactly. So by the eight nineties,
the Indian Wars ended, um, the reservations popped up, or
they were just flat out massacred, like you said, or imprisoned.
And this is when the Buffalo Soldiers ar died, uh
taking part in some of the land disputes out west
with white settlers. Yeah, the removal of the Sooners in Oklahoma,

(25:08):
that's huge, huge, because all of a sudden, black regiments
show up and they're like you, you might be white,
but you need to get out of here because you
didn't follow the rules. That's a huge change from a
decade or so before, when like those people would have
been enslaved in the South. It's it's a big deal.
What else. You mentioned San Juan from the Bob Marley song. Yeah,

(25:28):
that's that was when they entered the national stage for
the first time. Yeah, fighting in Cuba in Puerto Rico. Yeah,
it's very confusing. They fought at the Battle of San
Juan Hill in Cuba and the Battle for San Juan
in Puerto Rico. That's right under the tenth Regiment under
the command of a guy named General John Pershing, who

(25:50):
you might be familiar with, is known as Blackjack Pershing,
the famous World War One general. Yeah, I had heard,
I knew, I had heard of him. He was named
black Jack because he was in command of the Black
Red amainst the tenth Cavalry, And I mean I think
in the First World War he was a little less
um willing to stand up and like advocate for them,
but by the time World War Two came around, he

(26:11):
was okay. So I didn't hear about the World War
Two part. But that was a pretty big betrayal in
World War One because he led the tenth Cavalry up
San Juan Hill in Cuba, um along with the rough Riders,
along with White infantry. The This battle was one of
the first ones right before the turn of the twentieth century.

(26:32):
Um where there were if you were standing back, like
looking at this battle, there's black guys, there's white guys.
There's black guys on horses, there's Spanish people coming down here,
like there's all these people. But the black um soldiers
and the white soldiers were intermingling, fighting together, side by side,
and they won. And Teddy Roosevelt said it was all me.

(26:54):
I I won the Battle of Cuba San Juan in Cuba.
But historians say, actually, no, these black regiments, specifically the
tenth Cavalry, really won this battle in the Spanish American
War down in Cuba, and it was huge. It put
the Buffalo Soldiers on the map for really the first
time ever in the American popular consciousness, and like um,

(27:18):
black families around America, like you could go into their
dining room and there'll be a print of like a
painting of the Battle of San Juan with the Buffalo
soldiers storming the hill like um. One historian put it
that they were there that generation's Jackie Robinson and Joe Lewis,
like they were the heroes, Like I was saying they
were the heroes at a time when Jim Crow Laws

(27:38):
were really coming into into force and have really really
bleak time for Black America. All of a sudden, there's
these buffalo soldiers that basically helped win the Spanish American War,
fighting alongside white soldiers too and being equal in that respect.
And that's why you'll see all those statues right next
to Teddy Roosevelt exactly exactly. And you know what, I

(28:01):
may have made up that part about General Pershing advocating
wor wor World War two, now that I think about it,
Oh well, that was I didn't get to the betrayal thing, chuck.
So when World War One roll rolled around, he was
in charge of I think basically everybody in Europe, and
he turned his back on his black regiment and all
black soldiers and basically said, no, you guys fighting your

(28:22):
own regiments. So I don't want you fighting side by side.
And but the French were like, hey, come fight with us,
we'll we'll command you. And that happened. That reminded me.
The French were also the first ones to recognize officially
the Native American code talkers, even before the United States did.
Remember that, and they also used black aviators in World

(28:42):
War One two, So up with the French historically speaking,
there's a teacher that gave us those fries and that bread.
You mean, freedom fries, freedom bread. I feel like I'm
talking a lot, am I I mean, no more than usual, Okay,
read them. So in World War Two, the Buffalo Soldier

(29:04):
units were used a lot um a lot of times.
Though they were not on the front lines. They were
stuck to administrative and support duties. Um. But they did
join in combat here and there, uh and on both
the theaters in the war. Um, mostly towards towards the
end of World War two. Um. But it was you know,
a lot of this, A lot of the good that

(29:27):
you see coming out of what the Buffalo Soldiers did
was foundation work and groundwork for desegregating the military, for
showing that these guys are just the same as white soldiers.
They're just as capable, they fight just as bravely. Um.
And it really kind of laid that groundwork for the
desegregation after the war. Yes, like a direct line for it.

(29:51):
It's weird, but they basically a way to put it
is that the white America said, okay, all right, if
you will, we'll give you a shot. You go out
and serve in battle, and let's see what you what
you can do, and then maybe we'll see what we'll
see from there. And just by being given that one
opportunity two to show that they could do things that

(30:15):
were presumed they couldn't, like act bravely and fight um
and be a good soldier, that was like, you know,
good at being a soldier. They proved that all of
these myths about how black people couldn't do these things
were wrong. And that kind of thing opens up some
people's eyes too. Okay, well, what else do I think

(30:36):
about black people that are wrong? And it's weird to
think about because on a on a um, on a
social level, that that's what it takes, that that people's
minds can be changed like that. But historically, speaking in retrospect,
like that's how it happens, you know, like one prejudice

(30:57):
is tested and then all of a sudden, other prejudices
start lowly, yeah, kind of kind of falling over like dominoes, totally,
very very slowly. Though unfortunately, like dominoes, you can only
picture falling fast. I know, do that in SloMo. It's
almost a terrible analogy almost, so it's crazy to think,
but um. Even though desegregation happened long before this, it

(31:21):
takes a while for that to fully happen. And they
were Buffalo soldier units in the Korean War, all black
units in the Korean War. There was but it was
I think that Truman signed this act disagregating the military. Yeah,
and I think it was took three more years. Nineteen
fifty one was when the final the final one was disbanded. Right.

(31:43):
But that's why I was saying you could trace a
direct line of disaggregation from the military, because that was
the first chance that Black America had to show that
it could be treated equally and that it could act equally. Um.
And they showed that, and it led to disagregation in
the military. And then three years after the actual in

(32:04):
practice disegregation of military regiments, there was the Brown Versus
Board of Education ruling, which not in practice but in
theory disegregated schools. So it went army schools and then
eventually socially it just kept going. Yeah, but it was
because of the Buffalo soldiers and in their service directly, undisputedly.

(32:27):
Oh yeah, I mean that's crazy to think. As late
as the Korean War, though some of those units were
still fighting. Ye, it is because when I think of Match,
it doesn't feel modern, but it doesn't feel like Buffalo
Soldier territory. Right, Yeah, the Buffalo Soldiers you think of
like nineteenth century American West, nine fifties Korea. No, you
don't think of Hawkeye and his jen Still. I guess

(32:51):
there was one black character on Match with a very
unfortunate name, but we won't talk about that. I'm not familiar.
All right, Well, I think we should take a break
and come back and talk about what is to me
one of the cooler aspects of this whole story, the
Bob Marley song. No, we'll be right, all right, We're back,

(33:32):
and we're going to talk about what I think is
one of the coolest little parts here of this whole story,
which I never knew. If you've ever been to Sequoia
National Park or Yosemite National Park or some other national
parks out west, and you're hiking a trail or driving
down a road, you might have the Buffalo Soldiers to

(33:52):
thank for that trail in those roads. Uh. They and
it's one of their their highlight achievements to me is
once we established the national parks Teddy Roosevelt again build
statues of him. Right. Um, you had to enforce this
stuff because this was the first time we were like,
wait a minute, this is protected land. You can't just
come in here and take the timber or hunt, you know,

(34:15):
the animals. Like, there are rules now, you set up
like you set aside grazing lands, set aside national parks.
Libertarians they take issue with that kind of thing, and
you need to have buffalo soldiers to fight them off.
That's right. So from to nineteen thirteen, about twenty five
years or so, these some of these black regiments were

(34:36):
essentially the first park rangers. They didn't have that name
at the time. Um, but they kept the poachers at
bay and stopped the illegal grazing and the timber thieves.
Uh they fault wildfires. Yeah. I didn't get a chance
to really look into this, but I wonder what nineteen
thirteen wildfire fighting was. Like, I'll bet it was real
dicey bucket brigade stuff. Probably like firefighting is dicey wildfire fighting,

(35:01):
but a hundred years ago, man, I hopet it was.
I can't imagine. God, but like I said, with the
trails and stuff, a lot of some of the more
significant trails and roads. Some of the buildings, yeah, some
of the older cabins, they were built and constructed by
Buffalo soldiers, which is just super cool. Yeah. So if
you find a building in Yosemite or Sequoia National Parks,

(35:22):
that's yes, then it was probably built by Buffalo soldiers
or hiking a trail. Yeah, this is all just super cool. Yeah,
it's pretty cool. They also rode bicycles around the place too,
which is kind of neat. Yeah. Um, so, Chuck. The
last Buffalo soldier, and I mean, like original Buffalo soldier,

(35:43):
Mark Matthews. He died on September six, two thousand five.
He was interred at Arlington National Cemetery. He was a
hundred and eleven years old, and he actually fought under
General Pershing in the tenth Cavalry on the hunt for Chovia.
Oh yeah, yeah, I think I don't know if we

(36:04):
mentioned that. How many medals of honor were there? Twenty three?
I saw three. The National Museum of African American History
says eighteen. I'm gonna go with them all right, somewhere
between eighteen and twenty three, let's saying that. Yeah, So
you know, the I guess the moral of the story
is that they did provide this um direct line to desegregation,

(36:25):
not only through the army, but, like you're saying, all
through America. But sadly, a lot of them did exit
the military. Um. Some of them did have a little
uh higher status and a leg to stand on. Many
of them didn't. Uh they were There was a study
of lynchings in the US that found that black military
veterans were targeted uh and lynched more the non veteran

(36:46):
black people, with the idea that it was a real
threat in uh, the racist white South for a black
man to leave the army with some rank and some
status and feeling good guns, feeling good about himself. Don't
forgetting the Tulsa Maskre episode. It was the World War
One bets who are like, uh, no, we're gonna go
defend this boy from being winched with guns. They showed

(37:09):
up with guns. I think, um, there, I remember in
the Black Panther episode two. Um, they traced a direct
line of this um the sense of like you need
to defend yourself and protect yourself with firearms. They traced
that directly to World War One veterans. Yeah, yeah, so
there is a terrible logic to that, I guess. Yeah,

(37:34):
for sure. There was also a terrible um senator and
governor of Mississippi named James Vardaman who was just straight
up white supremacist. Like, no matter how you slice it,
you could have just said senator from Mississippi in seventeen Uh,
he's He spoke to the U Senate and he really

(37:55):
kind of crystallizes how they felt about black veterans. In
nineteen seven on the Senate floor, he said, once you
impress the Negro with the fact that he is defending
the flag and inflate his untortured soul with military airs,
his political rights must be respected. Um. And he wasn't
saying like and that's great, Yeah, so let's respect that. Yeah,

(38:17):
this was a warning basically, and he was over over looked.
He didn't listen to him ultimately, because they did continue
having black soldiers as soldiers and eventually desegregated, which led
to de segregation in America, which is pretty great. That's right.

(38:38):
I would love to hear from some current African American
military personnel because I want to know what the current
sort of temperature is as an active service person. Oh
what the racism is like in the military. Yeah, sure,
I'm sure you know that there will be different versions
of that story depending on who you're in contact with

(39:02):
and what your particular like platoon is like. Yeah. I
wonder though, because the military is like some kind of
weird similar acre of American society, and I wonder if
it's more racist or less racist. I think there's a
chance to go either way. I mean, my guess is
less you know my uh, like I said, my brother

(39:22):
in law before and is a marine and it's pretty
high up, you could say. And every time I've been
on these marine bases a lot, and it all seems
like they're all sort of you know, got that thinking
that group think going on, like we're just marines, like
none of us are a color, we're green. Well I've

(39:42):
seen full metal jacket, right, and there are a lot
of racist stuff in there. I'm sure. Okay, Yeah, I
could go either way. It could go either way. I
would like to hear um that as well. I'd also
like to hear from any Native American listeners to know
what what they were taught about Buffalo soldiers to what
was pushed down within the different tribes because they contacted

(40:04):
all sorts of different tribes from the Lakota Sioux up
in the north down to the Apaches in New Mexico
and Mexico. Um, yeah, teach us everyone. Yeah, well we'll
read them on listener mail. Uh. If you want to
know more about Buffalo soldiers, there's a lot of really
great stuff to read. Uh. And you can't really go
wrong with a guy named Frank Schubert who is a

(40:26):
scholar of them of Buffalo Soldiers, and he's got a
lot of articles on the web and I believe some
books too. Um. And since I said Frank Schubert, it's
time for listener mail. Oh no, it's not. Oh, that's right.
You know what it's time for hit him, Chuck. It
is time for administrative details. So we haven't done this

(40:51):
in a little while. If you're new to the show,
administrative details is where we take a couple of minutes.
We're gonna do this on this episode in the next
you got that straight to read out some thank yous.
Tell him Chuck for some of the kindnesses that people
throw our way, that's right, whether they be uh, physical
totems like T shirts and buttons and to confectioneries like

(41:14):
cookies and pastries and Jesus that what I did not
do on this one, and I feel bad because you
probably did is write down all the names of all
the postcards and letters I wrote down the ones that
I I. Yeah, I think I've got basically everybody, And
we should say we almost always miss somebody or a few.
So if we don't say your name and you have

(41:36):
not been thanked on a previous administrative detail, please get
in touch with us so we can correct that. That's right.
And if you have a letter or a postcard that
is on my desk, I'll include those in the next
batch because now I feel bad. Bam, All right, let's
go through these. Oh and there's also some people who
I don't have names for, but we do have the items,
so you can also write in and be like that
was me. That's right. For example, the very nice person

(41:59):
who gave us aman cookies and whiskey cake at our
Orlando show, our live show in Orlando. Don't remember or
don't have the name of who gave us that, but
thank you for him. Katie from Davis, California. Sinis some
cool little notebooks. They were little notebooks like um schemes

(42:20):
was like the title of one of them. We can
write schemes, band names, just sort of fun names on
the covers of these notebooks. Thanks a lot, huge, huge,
thanks as always to our good friends Hillary and michaelows
Are and they're good friends. The people at Flathead Like
Cheese for all the cheese. That's right. Flathead Like Cheese
is far and away my favorite cheese in the world.

(42:42):
It's good cheese. They make very good cheese. You guys
cannot go wrong. Just go get some Flathead Like cheese
and you'll love it. Yeah, a lot of the I
don't know if they specialize in Gouda, but we seem
to be on the Gouda mailing list. They make a
hopped gooda that is my favorite. Have you had it?
Oh yeah, Oh my gosh, it has hops in it.
It's like it's a beer, but it's cheese. Uh. And

(43:03):
while we're on the lows R's Hilary and Mike and
Coop Um. I just got this today. They sent us
Apron's word butcher an appropriate. So it's a knife going
into the lettering of a word butcher. Because I don't
know if you guys know this, but we are well
known to mispronounce everything to butcher words and you're going

(43:27):
to do that. So uh Smarty from France sent us
a tea card with some lady to Marmott's tea attached.
Thank you, Smarty. Jess Vow send us his game that
he designed, Philosophy The Game or better yet, Drunk Philosophy.
It's a great name. Katie Barnes from the Barns Made

(43:51):
Soap Company for the Wonderful Soap. All of them are
really good, but I strongly recommend the Autumn fig and
the Mariner Brian Barr good stuff. Oh, you can head
over to Barnes Made b A r n E S
M A d E dot com for some of Katie soaps.
Becky in France sent us planetary coasters that she made

(44:13):
in her studio is uh seafed studio dot com. That
is c E P h e I D studio dot
com if you want some planetary coasters. They are pretty
spacey and awesome. Kevin Reuter gave us Basil Hayden and
bullet rye you remember that at our show at the
Bellhouse and even wrapped them up as Christmas presents. It's right,

(44:36):
which is just lovely. Thanks a lot, Kevin and funny enough.
At the show, somebody asked us like, what are what
like drink we would want to have on a desert
island if we could only have one, and both of
us were saying jin drinks, and he was like, well,
I guess I guessed wrong with the basil. Haydoulle's like, no, dude,
you you nailed it all inclusive. Our buddy van Nostri

(44:57):
and I feel like he sent us more than this,
So if you something else, let us know. We just
hung out with him and his wonderful wife, Leah Uh
in Seattle. They sent us. He sent us some records,
some awesome record Smurfs, Disco Duck, Lawrence Welkin, Uh, John Denver,
the John Denver Muppets, Christmas and you know what, um
Van Nostrin gave us books before, and one of them

(45:20):
was about Oh, I can't say yeah because that because
the live show is not out. But he gave us
a book about the live show years ago and I
never got around to reading him. They reminded me after
the show, They're like, you know that we send you
that book. Your dummy said, I'll have to read it now.
Will and Katie lin Lee send us coffee from Coffee
by Design, So nice dee lish Uh, let's see. Nicole Collins,

(45:45):
d O dr Osteopathy sent us a copy of her
book Insight, which is on vision like real vision and
the miracle that is vision. So check it out, Insight,
Doctor of Metal. I was I was delivered by a
dal and one of the things they do is they

(46:07):
adjust you like your baby, and they adjust you like
a chiropractor when you're born. I was born breach, so
the deo adjusted me in reverse order. Apparently everyone delivery
room game a golf clap afterward, and you waved your hands.
Thank you every much. Yeah, thank you. I have a
taste for this applause. Uh. Indigo Proof from Portland's Uh

(46:30):
sent me a gift certificate for one free dinnom repair
NI because I complained about my Levi's blowing out, so
they said, send me those jeans and we'll fix them
for you. It's Indigo Proof in worlds. Did they fix
Jens Portland organ? Uh? That is a gene fix in town.
I've got a super old one from not this past October,

(46:54):
but the October before last. Chuck. Wow, do you remember
Kathy with a kay Tosh and believe our Phoenix show
or Salt Lake City Show, one of the two we're
talking about, gave us lasso, real live lass, rope and rope,
and she said, go on to YouTube and learn how
to lasso. Now. Yeah, and I have yet to do that,
but I still have my lasso, So thanks a lot,

(47:15):
Kathy too. Yeah it's not only cool too, because I
will try and learn that one day, but it looks
cool hanging on the wall for sure, you know. And
also I think Kathy is a postal worker, so hopefully
she dug our our going postal episode. I haven't heard
from her, that's right. Email is Kathy and let us
know how we did the correction to read. But I'm
just wait for a listener mail for that one. Oh yeah,

(47:36):
that was that was me? That was my bad? Was
it just you? I think so somebody else made it
seem like it was meant Um, how many more should
we do for this one? Listen to do three more? Okay?
Anna Parker she is a painter and muralist who did
this lovely painting of uh my three dogs, two of
which are now dearly departed. But it's very very sweet

(47:59):
and speaking of which you can find those her work
at sweet ta Murals dot com. Oh yes, very nice. Uh,
let's see um, Lance Roper, who's my boy from Toledo,
who is from Actual Coffee and Toledo sent me some
really good coffee, so check out Actual Coffee Intellectual Coffee.

(48:21):
Betty epper Lesen a Svoodoo dolls of us. Oh, I
want to know who made that? Those are so cool.
They're like really cute and they're laden with little Easter
eggs like I'm holding all kinds of crazy things that
all relate to shows. I'm holding a magic mushroom. Really yeah,
well that's from a show. But they had no pins,

(48:41):
we should point out, so they weren't voodoo dolls that
were out to harm us. Her son Josh introduced her
to the show and her husband. Thanks Betty momos riding
my foot online too. Really yeah, that's very cute. Let's
see um the wooden egg and special egg coasters s

(49:02):
y s K egg coasters from the very kind people
at good egg World. Yeah yeah, all right, I got
one more for this a dish Adam Peterson. This was
a really cool gift. He sent us two bottles of
Coca Cola from the very last run of return herble
bottles that Coca Cola ever did. Uh. They were small
family run bottler in Winona, Minnesota, and he said his

(49:26):
in laws had run it since two So these were
the last run of returnables that came off the line.
And they're even stamped with their little family bottler name
and everything. Oh that's really very cool. Uh all right,
last one, this one came from the Toronto show guy
named Phil Bowen gave us each a prosthetic eye. Oh man,
that's one of the best ever, one of the best

(49:48):
gifts either one of us has ever got. So cool.
So thanks a lot for our prosthetic eyes. Phil. We
still have them. I think it's a picture of us
wearing them too. Yeah, okay. Uh. If you want to
get in touch with us, just to say hi or
to send us something, it doesn't matter. You can go
onto stuff you should Know dot com and follow our
social links there I think, and uh, as always, you
can send us an email, wrap it up, spank it

(50:10):
on the bottom, and send it off to stuff Podcasts
at iHeart Radio dot Stuff you Should Know is a
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