Born only a year after a civil war that brought the emancipation of his people from slavery, Dennis Bell died a decorated military hero of his country. In June 1898 he and other Black American soldiers manned a daring mission under heavy fire to rescue fellow servicemen stranded at an enemy outpost. This act of heroism during the Spanish-American War led to Bell and three other rescuers receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor.
But history forgot Bell and his comrades. The Buffalo Soldiers, as they were known, who bravely fought to liberate Cuba from Spanish colonial rule became all but erased from later commemorations of the conflict. Only recently have we fully recovered the story of why Black Americans demanded the right to serve their country, how they contributed to its military success, and why the daring and determination they showed time and again on the battlefield was lost to public memory.
The Buffalo Soldiers came into being following the end of the American Civil War. In July 1866 Congress established a new peacetime military under the Army Reorganization Act. This led to the creation of six Black regiments, later reduced to four, the 9th and 10th Cavalry and the 24th and 25th Infantry. Many of the men who served in these units, some of them former slaves, had fought for the Union during the war. Command of the regiments was entrusted mostly to white commissioned officers.
Stationed on the western frontier, the Black
