Washington's Black Militias and the 1st Separate Battalion, 1867–1918

Armed, uniformed Black militiamen in the mid-1870s, from the Illustrated London News. Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-50704.

Militias of their own

In 1867, Congress changed the militia laws to let African American men enroll, and Black men in the District of Columbia quickly formed their own militia companies. On April 16, 1868, DC's Butler Zouaves, Independent Blues, National Band, Georgetown Zouaves and Liberty Guard, joined by four companies from Baltimore, marched through the city for DC's Emancipation Day.

The militiamen were fixtures of the city's Emancipation celebrations. In 1872, when about 300 of them — 200 armed — paraded past the White House, President Ulysses Grant and his cabinet saluted them. When the Emancipation Memorial was dedicated in Lincoln Park in 1876, three companies of the 1st Battalion Colored Troops escorted Grant and the featured speaker, Frederick Douglass.

In May 1887, two Black companies from Virginia and DC's Washington Cadet Corps took part in the National Drill and Encampment — the nineteenth century's only racially integrated militia competition. The Cadet Corps had been founded in 1880 by Civil War veteran and Medal of Honor recipient Christian A. Fleetwood, who led it until it joined the District of Columbia National Guard in 1891. The Black units won no prizes, but the Savannah Tribune reported their "soldierly bearing" when two white Southern units, the Memphis Zouaves and Vicksburg Southrons, refused to parade behind them; the Washington Bee suggested the white units dropped out because they "were jealous of the ringing cheers their Black rivals received."

The High School Cadet Corps at M Street High School, today the Perry School, 1895. Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-79812.

Captain Christian A. Fleetwood, who helped organize the Washington Cadet Corps and the High School Cadet Corps, and later served as an officer in the 1st Separate Battalion. Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-48685.

Discrimination in the Guard

When the DC National Guard reorganized the independent militias in 1885, ten of its first twenty-four regiments were Black. Discrimination began at once: officers of the white regiments were invited to the opening of the new Brigade Headquarters; the Black officers were not. The Black regiments were cut back again and again, supposedly for low membership, and in 1891 Commander Albert Ordway moved to disband those that remained. Prominent Black Washingtonians appealed directly to President Benjamin Harrison, who ordered Ordway to consolidate them into one battalion instead — the 1st Separate Battalion.

The discrimination continued. After Virginia disbanded its Black militia in 1899, Governor James Hoge Tyler refused to let the DC militiamen march in Warrenton's Emancipation Day parade. And although the battalion routinely scored well in reviews and was eager to serve, Guard commander Brigadier General George H. Harries accepted none of its volunteers for the Spanish-American War of 1898.

Pride and service

The battalion kept its place in the community. In 1909 it paraded at the dedication of the Dr. Benjamin Stephenson Grand Army of the Republic Memorial, before the Black Civil War veterans who had opened the way for its service, and it worked closely with DC's Black Grand Army of the Republic posts — in 1909 and 1911 escorting the elderly veterans to Harmony National Cemetery for Memorial Day. The historian Martin K. Gordon later judged it not only a center of Black Washington's social life but a first-rate combat unit.

When the United States entered World War I in 1917, the battalion became the 1st Battalion, 372nd Infantry Regiment, and went to France, where, in the DC National Guard's words, it rivaled the famed "Harlem Hellfighters" in distinction and bravery. In six months it fought in the Champagne offensive and suffered more than 200 casualties. Nineteen enlisted men were decorated for valor, and the 372nd received the Croix de Guerre with Palm. General Mariano Goybet, commander of the French 157th Division, told the regiment in 1918: "You have given proof of the finest qualities of bravery, and by your daring exploits and your admirable scorn of danger, I recommend your regiment for a citation in the orders of the French Army."

The legacy lives on in the 372nd Military Police Battalion of the District of Columbia Army National Guard.

More from the Park Service on Black soldiers on the western frontier, in the Spanish-American War and in World War I, and on African American contributions to Memorial Day.

Sources

Based on "DC Black Militias & The 1st Separate Battalion," National Mall and Memorial Parks, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The article draws on Martin K. Gordon, "The Black Militia in the District of Columbia, 1867–1898," Records of the Columbia Historical Society 71/72 (1971/1972), whose words are paraphrased here; Roger D. Cunningham in The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (2002); the DC National Guard's public affairs office; and period newspapers — the Evening Star, New National Era, Savannah Tribune, Washington Bee and Washington Tribune; rewritten in hubnx's own words. A 1918 photograph of Company B, 372nd Infantry, credited to the DC History Center, is not reproduced.