Written by Wayne Hare

Every February, the contributions of Black Americans are recognized during Black History Month. Since I’m Black I appreciate that. But I also have an observation - its observance has become predictable. 

Everybody knows that Black Americans were enslaved and well over 4,000 were lynched; that Rosa Parks helped spark and Martin Luther King Jr. led the civil rights movement that changed America. We usually hear tell of the Tuskegee Airmen, the Buffalo Soldiers, and the Black musicians that created America’s great new music – the blues and jazz. All were heroes by any measure.

But by singling out the same Black heroes – again and again -- we ignore another reality: Blacks have always been a forgotten part of American. There has been no glory and no shame that was not shared by both white and Black Americans.

Nowhere is this truer than in the West – a romanticized region where the lives and contributions of Black Americans are mostly ignored – but where Black Americans fought in all of the Indian wars, drove cattle from Texas to Kansas and beyond, led wagon trains over mountain passes, trapped beaver, formed cavalry units, founded entire towns, been among the most notorious of outlaws and, conversely, some of the bravest U.S marshals, and even owned and profited from slaves. Like every other American throughout our brief history, Blacks have been among the good, the bad and the ugly. 

*When Bass Reeves, a legendary deputy U.S marshal, died in 1910, the Oklahoma Muskogee Phoenix eulogized him in surprising and revealing words: “Bass Reeves was absolutely fearless and knowing no master but duty... Reeves faced death a hundred times. Many desperate characters sought his life, yet the old man even on the brink of the grave went along the path of duty…Black-skinned, illiterate, offspring of slaves whose ancestors were savages, this simple old man’s life stands white and pure alongside some of our present-day officials… it is lamentable that we as white people must go to this poor, simple old negro to learn a lesson in courage, honesty and faithfulness to official duty.” A tinge of white superiority even as he was honored in death.

*The Seminole-Negro Indian scouts were descendants of escaped slaves who had settled among the Seminole Indians of Florida. In the late 1830s, they were relocated to the Indian Territories, and when slave hunters continued to persecute them there, a band fled to Mexico. Drawing on survival skills learned in Florida and adapted to the barren terrain of the Mexico borderlands, they became known for their skills, toughness and courage. During the 1870s, the U.S Army recruited some of these men into the cavalry to form a highly mobile strike force during the Indian wars. The Seminole-Negroes never numbered more than 50 at a time, yet they distinguished themselves to such an extent that they received four Congressional Medals of Honor while never losing a single scout. Though the scouts were promised their own land in return for their service, it comes as no surprise that the country never made good on that promise.

*The all Black 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, formed in 1943, trained as combat paratroopers but due to racism never made it overseas. Instead, the men were sent to the Northwest to combat blazes that might be started by incendiary balloons sent by the Japanese. The balloon threat fizzled, but the men fought forest fires and were among the nation’s first “smoke jumpers.”

*Isaiah Dorman, the only Black man to fight and die at the Battle of Little Big Horn, was also the only soldier whose dying words have been preserved. Dorman spoke the Sioux language perfectly, and while mortally wounded, tried unsuccessfully to talk the Indians out of maiming his already bloody body. The first known account of Dorman was as a courier for the Army in the Dakota Territory. In 1871, the Army hired him to guide the Northern Pacific Railroad survey team, then later that same year as a Sioux interpreter. In 1876, Custer ordered him to accompany the Little Big Horn expedition. Dorman refused, having had a family by this time, so Custer sweetened the pot by raising his pay from $50 to $75 a month. Dorman never lived to collect his increased pay. To this day, he or his heirs are still owed $102.50 back pay, plus around 150 years’ interest.

Black history, American history -- aren’t they the same thing? Somewhere along the way, the notion that we have different values and different cultures has been fostered and believed. But in spite of the ugliness and mistrust that we maintain to this day, our histories have always been intertwined. Let us celebrate Black heroes this month, but my dream is that someday we can become one community of Americans, solving our numerous common American problems.