BLACK SOLDIERSAT FORT DOUGLAS, 1896–99, by Michael J. Clark

Black Soldiers at Fort Douglas, 1896 –99

Although the record is clear, few people know that on the east bench, overlooking Salt Lake City and touching the boundaries of the University of Utah, more than six hundred Black people—soldiers of the United States Twenty-fourth Infantry, wives, children, and others—lived, worked, and attended school for almost four years. . . . Twenty-one graves in the little Fort Douglas cemetery . . . serve as quiet reminders that Black people exceeded the geographical boundaries historians have generally assigned them. Two additional graves mark the resting place of Black cavalrymen from the famous Ninth Cavalry stationed at Fort Duchesne, Utah, prior to the turn of the century. . . .

The arrival of the Twenty-fourth Infantry in Salt Lake City more than doubled Utah’s Black population. . . . Utah’s total Black population, civilian and military, exceeded eighteen hundred in the fall of 1896 and reached twenty-three hundred in 1898 after the Twenty-fourth returned from the Spanish–American War.

Parker Buford, served thirty years in the Twentyfourth. Discharged from the army in 1898 . . . Buford continued to live in Salt Lake City until his death in 1911. He is buried in the Fort Douglas cemetery. His wife, Eliza Elizabeth Buford, lived in Salt Lake City until 1920, when she moved to . . . California, dying there at the age of ninety. Thornton Jackson [was] also a member of the Twenty-fourth and long-time resident of Salt Lake City. . . . Those [few] who made Utah their home raised families, sent their children to school, and planted traditions. . . .

Members of the Twenty-fourth, perhaps over fifteen hundred different individuals, were significant additions to the Salt Lake City population in both an economic and a social sense. . . . The local community, for the first time in history, experienced the influx of a relatively large and cohesive military group that greatly augmented the already existing Black community. . . . Generally speaking, suspicion and uncertainty gave way to confidence and resolution, stereotypes to a tenuous familiarity; and with the advent of war, the two worlds met in the camp of selfinterest. Black soldiers, members of the Ninth Cavalry and Twenty-fourth Infantry and later, the Twenty-fifth Infantry, became improbable ambassadors. More than two thousand different soldiers carried a like number of versions about their stay in the “Great Basin Kingdom” to the far corners of the United States. (See Leonard J. Arrington, “Black Pioneer Was Union Fort Settler,” Pioneer magazine, September–October 1981.) Excerpts from Michael J. Clark, “Black Soldiers at Fort Douglas, 1896–99,” Utah Historical Quarterly (Summer 1978).

Black veterans of the Spanish–American War return to Utah.