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The War with Spain
In February 1898, the battleship Maine mysteriously blew up in Havana's harbor, killing 260 American sailors. The war with Spain began in April. Over 3,000 Buffalo Soldiers served with distinction on the battlefields of Las Guasimas, El Caney, and San Juan Hill. They fought up San Juan Hill beside white regular army regiments and the 1st Volunteer Cavalry -- - the Rough Riders -- led by Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Roosevelt. After the battle, Rough Rider Frank Knox said, "I never saw braver men anywhere," and Lieutenant John J. Pershing wrote, "They fought their way into the hearts of the American people."
Although the war was promoted as a fight to liberate Caribbean and Philippine islanders from Spanish oppression, the participation of Buffalo Soldier and black volunteer regiments was controversial within the African American community. Blacks questioned whether they, who were deprived of civil rights by federal and state laws and were being lynched and terrorized in the South, should fight overseas for a government that recognized them as citizens in name only. |