The Military-State-Society Symbiosis by Peter Karsten

Author:Peter Karsten [Karsten, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, Wars & Conflicts (Other)
ISBN: 9780815332374
Google: ZhK31bkeh4IC
Goodreads: 4755880
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 1998-01-15T11:14:27+00:00

By Frank N. SCHUBERT

Black Soldiers on the White Frontier: Some Factors Influencing Race Relations

A BODY OF LITERATURE concerning the use of black soldiers on the post-Civil War frontier has emerged in recent years. Some of these new studies have focused on the black soldiers themselves and others have dealt with them tangentially to other central topics.1 However, all of the works share one common characteristic. They have left largely untouched the question of what formed the attitudes of white frontier communities toward black soldiers.

All the factors which shaped the responses of frontier communities to black military garrisons may never be fully discerned. However, a study of the role of black soldiers in Wyoming, one of the frontier states in which they served, indicates that the varying conditions of frontier life played an important part in the development of white attitudes. The suggestions are tentative but may prove useful in evaluating relations between black troops and white civilians elsewhere in the Frontier West.

To state that the white response was racist involves no unnecessary risks. Whites who migrated westward certainly carried their bigotry with them.2 After black regiments were added to the regular army in 1866, a distaste for black troops was therefore practically inevitable. As one professional soldier observed, “The national prejudice has followed the flag across [to] the Pacific Ocean.”3

The Ninth Cavalry first arrived in Wyoming in 1885, a year in which seventy-four black Americans were lynched in the United States.4 Between 1885 and 1912, the last year for black troops in Wyoming until World War II, Southern states codified their racism while the rest of the nation watched.5 Two months after the last black troops left Wyoming, Woodrow Wilson, who later permitted the segregation of most black employees of the federal government, was elected president.6

The spread of blatant racism in this period did not bypass Wyoming. The 1887 territorial code authorized optional segregation in school districts which had fifteen or more “colored children.” Article VII of the state’s 1890 constitution provided assurance to the contrary: “In none of the public schools … shall distinction or discrimination be made on account of sex, race or color.”7 However, the choice was still available in 1940.8

Not all of Wyoming’s racist actions provided options. Citizens of the state lynched five black Americans, and, in 1913, prohibited racial intermarriage for the second time.9 Indeed, it seems that the “Equality State’s” participation in the mainstream of American racism was restricted more by the small number of black residents than by its own inclinations.10 Given this context, a generally racist response to the black regulars is neither surprising nor unusual. More interesting and more important for assessment of frontier race relations are the vaiations in the reaction to the troops and the different conditions of frontier life which they reflect.11

Johnson County in the rural northern part of Wyoming had demonstrated its contempt for blacks with “coon dances,” before the Ninth Cavalry’s 1885 arrival. The local newspaper, the Big Horn Sentinel,12 recorded two such affairs in the year prior to the arrival of the black cavalrymen.

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