A History Remembered
by Ranger Shelton Johnson

One day I wandered into Yosemite’s Research Library and was talking to the librarian when I noticed an old photograph. I took a closer look at the picture and read the caption.

It was a photograph of the 24th Mounted Infantry taken somewhere in Yosemite in 1899. The 24th, along with the 25th Infantry and the 9th and 10th Cavalry, were African-American Army regiments that during the Indian War period became known as Buffalo Soldiers. In 1903, four troops of the 9th Cavalry became among the first “rangers” assigned to protect Yosemite and Sequoia & General Grant (Kings Canyon) National Parks. For me, as an African-American park ranger, seeing this photograph was like stumbling into my own family while traveling in a foreign country.

I had no idea that 100 years ago the 24th Mounted Infantry and the 9th Cavalry were entrusted with the protection of Yosemite National Park. I had never read this information in any history or heard another ranger tell this story. But there, staring at me, across a gulf of 100 years were these black soldiers who had overcome obstacles that made my challenges seem insignificant. I immediately wanted to know their names, to find out as much as I could about them. They had almost completely disappeared from Yosemite’s history. If it weren’t for this one photograph, who would know or care that they ever existed?

Yosemite’s military history is otherwise fairly well documented. Prior to the creation of the National Park Service in 1916, the U.S. Army was charged in the protection of Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Sequoia & General Grant (Kings Canyon) National Parks. With millions of acres of land set aside for preservation, the Department of Interior called upon the then Department of War for assistance—to protect Yellowstone’s fragile geothermal wonders, ancient groves of giant sequoias in the Sierra Nevada, and the sanctity of the national park idea itself from those who sought exploitation rather than inspiration.

In 1903, nearly 400 African-American soldiers made the dusty journey on horseback from the Presidio in San Francisco to Yosemite. During this time, African- Americans occupied the lowest rung on the social ladder. Most of the jobs available to “colored folks” were menial, labor-intensive, and very rarely considered professional. Segregation and lynchings were common affairs of daily life in America. One of the few paths out of this morass was through the military. The Army provided a vocation, training, room and board, and a pension. It also provided a sense of self-esteem; the uniform provided pride in country.

But while these soldiers had the same responsibilities as their Euro-American counterparts, they had the added burden of race on their shoulders. On the one hand, the Buffalo Soldiers were sent to protect parks, routinely telling white visitors what they could and could not do. On the other, these soldiers were a part of a larger society that had difficulty seeing them as symbols of authority. In spite of these challenges, the Buffalo Soldiers fulfilled their mission.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of their service in Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks. Birthdays are important to us individually because they celebrate our arrival into a family. So too, marking this centennial is a way of honoring the arrival of African-Americans into the family history of our wilderness parks. And since national parks exist “for the benefit and enjoyment of the people” both in the United States and around the world, this is also a celebration in which everyone can take pride.

Today, as a National Park Service ranger who is also African-American, I want to speak to these men, to tell them that they weren’t forgotten. The following “Letter to Dead Soldiers” is a result of that desire.

A LETTER TO DEAD SOLDIERS

Dear men,
Forgive me for not writing sooner, but I only recently discovered that the dead do not completely vanish from this earth. I realize now that death does not occur with the stopping of the heart, but when we choose to forget. One hundred years after horses and the creaking of wagon wheels, your names are air, unseen, yet moving around us. How can something as substantial as a column of twenty-six men riding side by side on a dusty road leave neither imprint on the ground nor sound in sky?

A century’s accumulation of dust has buried the fourteen days it took for you to get from San Francisco to Yosemite. Yet, there you are astride your horses in a Yosemite that is as close as the open window of my office.

When you arrived in Yosemite, the stockmen noticed your presence and avoided you. This was of little concern to sheepherders who used parklands illegally for grazing their flocks. They knew the country better than you, and ran their sheep far from the trails you patrolled. A million acres is a lot of space for 25 men to cover. It was easy in your time to avoid the presence of other people, and to lose yourself in Yosemite.

I think that I understand why you joined the army. You had few choices, and a military career provided a sense of dignity, respect, and a pension upon retirement. I imagine the hardships you endured in America and in service abroad. You left loved ones behind who cherished your memory. You risked your lives so that the lives of your brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, would be better. You are more than just soldiers of the Twenty-fourth Regiment of Infantry, and this story is bigger than just a chapter in Yosemite’s military history.

At the time of his death, Col. Charles Young (1897-1931) was the highest ranking African-American in the U.S. Army. Photo courtesy of the Charles Young Collection, National Afro-American Museum & Cultural Center,Wilberforce, OH

How can I reach across 100 years and hold out my hand for you to take? How can I convince people that you are not dead but live on? Not just in documents and old photographs, or even in the park ranger uniform I wear, but are real soldiers surviving into the present? Because I choose to remember you, you live on in me. I know your lives had meaning to black folks.

The deeper we gaze into the past, the greater our recognition of ourselves in other places and other times. You, who are soldiers, who are family, have given me that story. In so doing you have assured yourself a presence in Yosemite. Thank you for clearing the trail that I followed 100 years later. You cannot imagine how your passage has made my journey infinitely easier.

Shelton Johnson has been a Yosemite ranger since 1993. “I’ve always felt spiritually connected to Yosemite, but now I feel culturally connected as well.” He was the recent regional recipient of the Freeman Tilden Award, the highest honor given those who work in Interpretation within the National Park Service.

This article first appeared in the Summer/Fall 2003 edition of the Yosemite Guide (vol. XXXII, no. 1).