Stuff You Should Know - Who were the Buffalo Soldiers?

Episode Date: January 30, 2020

Josh and Chuck dive into history today to tell the story of the Buffalo Soldiers.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

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Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart radios, How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Action, Jackson Bryant, right? Sure.

And then there's Jerry over there, The Flash. That makes this Stuff You Should Know. That's right. If there's one thing people say to me is how much I'm like Carl Weathers. Sure. And how speedy Jerry is. Why do I wanna say that Carl Weathers

had one arm in Action, Jackson? I don't think that was the case. Has he ever had one arm in any of his, oh, I think his arm gets pulled off in Predator. Okay. I'm conflating the two. That sounds about right. I saw Predator but just once when it came out.

I saw it within the last 12 months. Oh yeah? I think it's even better now as it grown up. Oh yeah? Yeah. Okay. I can really feel the tension, like you're in the jungle there with everybody.

It's amazing. Have you been singing the Buffalo Soldier song like constantly in your head? Despite my best efforts, I can't stop. Well, I looked up the lyrics because I was just, I know some of them, but I wanted to kind of see where exactly he was probably talking about the soldiers.

Yeah. And there were some kind of on-the-nose references. Jerry mentioned San Juan. Mentioned San Juan. Wales. You know, fighting for America, fighting on a rival, fighting for survival. Sure.

I always got it wrong though. I thought he said Dreadlock Rockstar. No, he says Dreadlock Rasta. I know, I learned that today. Dreadlock Rockstar. I've been singing, well, I thought he was talking to himself. That's hilarious. I was singing it wrong.

I mean, he was singing about himself. No, he was singing about the Buffalo Soldiers. They weren't Rastas. I guess some of them could have been. Maybe. We'll find out. Anyway, I've been singing for 40 years, Dreadlock Rockstar. That's pretty great.

Like a dum-dum. Oh, that's all right. It's pretty close, man. And it still makes sense. The ones that don't make sense are the hilarious ones. That just seems like a very, I don't know, 1991 white college kid thing to sing. Dreadlock Rockstar.

Yeah, Dreadlock Rockstar. When you first start listening to Bob Marley. OK, you ready? I'm ready. So we're talking Buffalo Soldiers, and it is not just a Bob Marley song. If anything, the Bob Marley song is kind of like a history lesson, which is kind of interesting.

A bit. But the Buffalo Soldiers was the name of some all-black regiments, and then eventually all-black soldiers in the United States fighting in the United States military. That's right. From right after the Civil War, all the way up until, I think, 1951, when the last all-black regiment was disbanded and the military was, in practice, desegregated.

Yeah, but when did you say that happened? I think 1951. OK. But they did not take on that name until post-Civil War. Right. And at first, it wasn't a name that they took on themselves. It was a name that was given to them. There's a lot of dispute over where it came from,

who is the first to use that kind of stuff. But it's a really interesting history. And it's not just an interesting military history. There's a lot of terrible, tragic irony involved. Sure. There's this overarching theme where you can make a case that the Buffalo Soldiers are the ones who actually paved the way for desegregation

throughout the entire United States. You can trace a direct line from their service to desegregation. It's pretty amazing stuff. And yet, there's still this kind of cloud that hangs over them historically because of one of the things that they participated in, which was the genocide of Native Americans

at the behest of the White US government. Right, because they were trying to earn a place in White America and gain some status and prestige. And White America was like, we want you to do something for us first. And we'll still probably not grant you that respect. Yeah, which is kind of par for the course from what I understand as far as military service

and being black in America goes. In the Battle of New Orleans, the Black Phalanx, this black regiment ended up. Pretty cool name. Yeah, it really is. They ended up basically winning the battle against the British at the Battle of New Orleans, which actually came ironically after the end of the War of 1812.

But it was still a decisive battle. And they had been mustered a lot of them from local plantations by Andrew Jackson. And Jackson had promised them their freedom if they came and fought and won. And they came and fought and won. And Jackson said, yeah, sorry, you have to go back to your plantations.

I was lying. Yeah, that's not a surprise. Yeah, but imagine that. And that was not the first time that that had happened to him. That was pretty much par for the course. While they were enslaved, they would be promised freedom for fighting. And then, no, after the fact, it's just not going to happen.

Yeah, and like we said, the Buffalo Soldiers post-Civil War were and we'll get to their formal designation and their regiments and stuff like that. But there had been individuals enlisted and all the way back to the Revolutionary War, there were black individuals that would go and fight. But they just weren't grouped in their own regiments. The first one was the Black Regiment in Rhode Island,

I think. Yeah, in the Revolutionary War. And didn't we talk about them in short stuff about the Black Revolutionary War fighters? And they moved up to Nova Scotia? We definitely did. Did we? So the Grabster put a lot of this together for us,

which was a big help. And it's important to look at what was going on after the Civil War and this unique set of circumstances that were created that kind of led to these regiments being formed, which was about 12,000, maybe a little bit more, black veteran soldiers from the Civil War all of a sudden needed jobs.

And they were soldiers at this point. So they were like, you know, I'll keep doing this. This could be my career. Right. Like give us a job. Yeah. In Reconstruction in the South, they needed federal troops. They needed white federal troops.

Well, yes. It was probably not a good idea to send black troops for to oversee Reconstruction. So to occupy the South, can you imagine? No, it would not have been good. Oh, my God. So they sent white troops, of course, but that created a vacuum elsewhere where

they could use and utilize these black troops. Right. There were four million slaves that were now free. And Ed Hazard, I guess, that, you know, let's say a million, one and a half million of these were adult males that were ready to go and serve and fight if need be. And then we were going west. And we knew that there were Native Americans out there

that were not going to go easily. There was Mexico looming on the horizon as a potential conflict. And because they were sending white soldiers to the South, they needed people to go out west and kind of, you know, keep the peace in a way and take your business in another way. Or to remove Native Americans forcibly from their ancestral land. That's right.

So on July 28, 1866, Congress did something really surprising. They said, we've got all these kind of expansionist ideas. We've got the South that we need to occupy. We need a bigger army. We're going to raise a huge peacetime army. And not only that, we're going to form some all-black regiments. We're going to let black people enlist for the first time ever as peacetime soldiers.

Yeah, and partially because they just needed people. And partially because they thought these black veterans that fought in the Civil War for the Union, they should be rewarded with jobs. Exactly. So for the first time, the federal government didn't renege on the offer of something better after having served and fought as a soldier.

So there was a big deal in just allowing soldiers, black soldiers to enlist during peacetime. But the fact that they could enlist meant that they could become officers as well, which meant West Point was open to black soldiers for the first time. Which was a huge deal. In 1866 is when they expanded the army.

Just a few years later, they wanted to shrink the army a little bit. So they consolidated a bunch of regiments down to 25. And the original, I think it was six, four infantry and two cavalry were now shrunk down and combined into the ninth cavalry, the 10th cavalry. I'm saying both cavalry and cavalry. Sure, just covering all your bases.

Even though only one of them is correct, and it's cavalry. The 24th infantry and the 25th infantry. Right, and the fact that they survived this downsizing of the army, because Congress went, we need a big army. It's too big. Let's get rid of some soldiers. The fact that all black regiments survived is really miraculous, because in that downsizing decree

a few years later, it wasn't included like, and we still need to keep black regiments intact. And William Tecumseh Sherman was no great friend to the black man by any stretch of the imagination. And he was in charge of downsizing these troops. And yet he knew enough that there were still Congresspeople, congressmen in Congress, who had created the black regiments in the first place, that they would not be very happy

if he just dissolved them. So he kept them intact and actually just went from six to four. Yeah, and it's interesting, because it was peacetime, during wartime, especially back then, it was really pretty easy to get people to sign up and volunteer and fight for whatever side they were on. But in peacetime, they found that they

could get the cream of the crop of black soldiers, because they didn't have as much opportunity. So they could really be picky and get these really super-capable fighters, whereas on the other side, during peacetime, it was harder to get white soldiers that were as capable, because they had much more opportunities to do other things beyond like, hey, I got nothing going. I'll sign up for the army.

Right, exactly. And in the army, too, there's a lot of mythologizing about how the black regiments were treated, it related to white regiments as well. And it seems like some historians have shown, if you trace the supply lines, the black regiments got the same shoddy and then increasingly better supplies as the white regiments at the same time.

And in the army, you had just opportunities that just weren't afforded to you outside, like the opportunity to make money and have savings and a pension, things that you could kind of bank on a future with that was just not part of the black experience of black men back then. Right. I think that's a very robust setup and more.

Oh, we're still doing setup? No, that's beyond, that's why I said and more. But I think what I'm trying to say is it's a great time for a break. OK. Yeah? Yeah. All right, we'll be right back and we'll talk a little bit about how this name came to be right after this. On the podcast, HeyDude, the 90s,

called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends

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blowing on it, and popping it back in, as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to HeyDude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough,

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Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So, there's a lot in here about how this name came to be. But I think we can condense it to just a couple of versions, one of which was that the name may have come from the Native Americans as sort of an honor, like they're brave and they fight, they're like fierce,

like the buffalo. And like Sasha fierce? I don't know what that is. That's like Beyonce's weird alias. Really? Why do stars, when you get to this enormous huge point, decide to create an alter ego that is always not good? Chris Gaines.

Yes, learn the lesson from Chris Gaines. Yeah, who else has done that? It doesn't matter. Chris Gaines has done over 50 of them. Ziggy Stardust certainly worked. Captain Fantastic worked. Fine, Chris Gaines negates all those. No, I agree.

OK. I didn't know that Beyonce. Very short lived. Really? And what was the persona? Was it really different? I guess she was fierce. I don't know.

I just heard her name a couple of times. Beyonce's fierce, though, right? Right, you don't need an alter ego, Beyonce. You're fierce enough. You don't want to go too much fiercer. You should be her manager. I should. You know all the right moves.

So that is one of the stories was that it was a name of honor from the Native Americans. But this, to me, sounds like it might have been just something kind of cooked up in history books. Or it just kind of converted into that. Maybe. The Smithsonian Museum of African-American History says, yeah, that stands as popular lore.

That's one example. Another is basically there's two competing ones. And that is that the Native Americans did give this name to the black soldiers. But that they were referring to the woolliness of the black soldier's hair compared to white soldier's hair. And that if you look between the horns of a buffalo, that kind of like to pay almost that the buffalo is wearing

bears of vague resemblance to it. And that's where it initially came from. Yeah, and there's like direct evidence from letters and stuff of the time of this. Whether or not it was true or not, it was at least down in print as being the reason. But we don't know for sure. And we don't know for sure how they felt about the name,

other than it seems like as time went on, they kind of embraced the name as a designation. And in one case, there was one troop that did use a bison on a patch on their uniform. But then bison were used on other patches on uniforms of white soldiers, too. I think it was strictly black regiments. Oh, really?

Just later ones that weren't the 9th, 10th, 24th, or 25th. Oh, gotcha. That was my interpretation. But yeah, by the time I think 1911 is when that first patch appears. But so by the time 1911 rolls around, the black regiments had totally taken on Buffalo Soldier as a name of honor.

Yeah, and Ed points out, and I think it's fair, it's easy now in 2020 to look back at two ethnic groups that were kept under the thumb of the white man and say that, oh, the Native Americans respected them as fierce fighters, and the black soldiers respected the Native Americans. But that's probably retroactive revisionist history, because there were plenty of cases

where the Buffalo Soldiers referred to them as savages. And in one case of one soldier going as a costume party dressed up in, I guess, what you would call, a red face. Oh, yeah. And so yeah, it seems like that's sort of cooked up these days. They really had much respect for one another during their battles, but I don't know if that's the case.

But you can understand how people would want to do that. Sure. Because sending African-American soldiers out to remove Native Americans from their land with violence at the behest of white people. It's not a good story. No, it's a terrible story. Yeah, it takes a bad story and makes it worse.

And then at the same time, there's a real silver lining to it. There's that good story that black soldiers served as heroes for the black community in America as a whole at a time when they really needed some black heroes. The Jim Crow South was really starting to solidify. So it's not an all-bad story, but it's definitely not an all-good story either. So people want a nice storybook ending for sure,

which is surely where that came from. Yeah, I think so. So should we talk a little bit about what they did? Yeah, we should. That's their service record? Yeah, when they were first assembled in, I think, the late to mid-1860s, they were almost immediately moved out to the frontier, Kansas and Texas, New Mexico,

pushing further and further west as their work was increasingly successful. Yeah, and usually under the command of white officers, it was not looked at as some great assignment if you were a white officer to go west and command one of the Buffalo soldier regiments. Yeah, it would have been like being stationed in Alaska or something like that.

Alaska's great. Although some white commanding officers did rise to the occasion. Yeah, and had a lot of great things to say about the soldiers, too. For sure. Some of them definitely did not rise to the occasion and actually went the other way, you know?

Yeah, and you mentioned West Point. This was a huge deal because, like you said, now these young men could go attend West Point and come out officers upon entry into the army. There were quite a few cases. One was a man named Henry Flipper. He was the first black graduate of West Point in 1877, came out as second lieutenant in the 10th Cavalry,

and was basically set up with a court marshal. There was a case where he was put in charge of a quartermaster safe to guard it, basically, and take charge of it. Money becomes missing. He kind of freaks out and lies about it. It's kind of all evidence pointing to the fact that he didn't take the money. But he did lie about where it went.

What did he lie about then? I couldn't find that. I think that the initial money was missing at all, maybe? Oh, OK. I'm not really sure. But it looks like it was a setup. He was acquitted of the main charge even back then, and was found guilty of an added charge of conduct

unbecoming of an officer. The lying part. Right, and was dismissed from the army, which even back then was an overblown sentence compared to the similar charges of white officers. Right, and the army at the time, he could have gotten his discharge changed to honorable discharge, but the army apparently

didn't have any procedure to do that. So it was up to the commander in chief, Chester A. Arthur, to decide ye or nay, and he just let it pass by. Right. So was he a lieutenant? Second lieutenant. Second lieutenant Flipper went to his grave, saying that he was innocent.

And in the 90s, I think 1998, Bill Clinton finally pardoned him. Billy boy. He did. And Clinton, that ghoul, ordered him exhumed and reburied with full military honors. Oh, interesting. But they suspect that Clinton just wanted to see what the body looked like.

Come on. He said, let's do this right. Yeah, he probably did say that. So there are another couple of cases. John Hanks, Alexander, and Charles Young, they were West Point grads early on. They went on to lead these regiments. And that's not to say that at West Point,

it was smooth sailing, of course. They had a very hard time there and still persevered. Extraordinarily, Ed points out that in the Tuskegee Airman episode, too, I think we talked about how those guys who went through West Point had, or the military academies, had just an awful time of it, too. Yeah, I mean, that happened. I mean, it probably still happens to some degree.

But I mean, I read the Lords of Discipline. I did, too. And saw the movie. I don't know if I saw the movie or not. And that was, what year was that set? That was? It was probably the 60s. Wasn't, I don't remember.

What was the problem with that guy? He just was soft or something, wasn't it? He was, he had feelings. You know, I don't remember. I haven't seen it in a long time. But that was the Citadel, not West Point. Which is Navy, I think, right? Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard.

That's what the Citadel is. National Guard? No. Cub Scouts? Yes, it was Cub Scouts, Citadel. Famous Cub Scouts. Where they'll break your spirit. So these regiments had about 1,000 troops and officers.

But they were constantly under supplied. And like you said earlier, there's no evidence that they were intentionally under supplied. No, but it's a myth that they were. Yeah, but kind of everyone out West was because it takes a long time to get stuff out there. And a lot of those old Civil War weapons and equipment were pretty shoddy anyway.

Yeah, plus, I mean, it's not really easy to come by water in the New Mexico Desert, where you're fighting the Cheyenne or the Apache. So you have horses that need water, too, because you're a cavalry unit. And the horses we're breaking down is a really bad time as they were moving further and further west, because we tend to think of the United States military,

like in the terms of today, this just incredibly well oiled logistical juggernaut. Sure. That was not the case after the Civil War. As a matter of fact, until, I believe, the Spanish-American War, the United States military was looked upon internationally as kind of like not the best around.

Certainly not the best equipped. The logistics, we didn't have that kind of stuff down. You didn't hear it from me, but. Right, exactly. But and this is the army that these guys were enlisted in. So they were dealing with an army that was finding its feet, and then also on the frontier of the United States at a time when they're protecting the people

building the railroads. So there's not even the railroads out there yet. One of their jobs was to protect railroad workers, mail carriers, people who were on cattle drives. Yeah, these were the jobs they were tasked with. Well, they were also fighting, like we said, in what was known as the Indian Wars, including some of the big ones.

I think we need to do a big old episode on the Indian Wars. Yeah, let's do it. Wounded Knee, the White River War. I'd never heard of that one. I looked it up. The war is not a term for most of these. It should be massacre. No, it should be straight up massacres.

Although here's the other thing, too. This is really easy for guys like us to do, especially in retrospect, is what's called mythologizing the noble savage, where we make it seem like the Indians were just the people who kind of meekly accepted their fate and were just rolled over by the US government through this westward expansion.

That's not the case. In almost every case, the further west we got, the fiercer the fighting got. They pushed back, for sure. They engaged in massacres that included killing women and children and noncombatants. Both sides did. So it's not like the Native Americans were just

innocent of bloodshed, but it's important to remember that they were defending their lands from invaders. They were the insurgents in that. So there's a certain amount of moral higher ground that they were afforded just for being in that position. For sure. But that's the thing. That's why I've always been fascinated about history.

It's never just black and white. Yeah, there's so much nuance that gets overlooked, especially if you were raised in public schools in America. Exactly. Not a lot of nuance going on in those classrooms. White people swooped in, and everything was great. Exactly. So by the 1890s, the Indian wars ended.

The reservations popped up, or they were just flat out massacred, like you said, or imprisoned. And this is when the Buffalo soldiers started taking part in some of the land disputes out west with white settlers. Yeah. The removal of the Sooners in Oklahoma. That's huge. It is huge.

Because all of a sudden, black regiments show up, and they're like, you might be white, but you need to get out of here because you didn't follow the rules. That's right. That's a huge change from a decade or so before when those people would have been enslaved in the South.

Right. It's a big deal. What else? You mentioned San Juan from the Bob Marley song. Yeah, that was when they entered the national stage for the first time. Yeah, fighting in Cuba and Puerto Rico. Yeah, it's very confusing.

They fought at the Battle of San Juan Hill in Cuba, and the Battle for San Juan in Puerto Rico. That's right. Under the 10th Regiment, under the command of a guy named General John Pershing, who you might be familiar with, is known as Blackjack Pershing, the famous World War I general. Yeah, I knew I'd heard of him.

He was named Blackjack because he was in command of the black regiments, the 10th Cavalry. And I mean, I think in the First World War, he was a little less willing to stand up and advocate for them. But by the time World War II came around, he was. OK, so I didn't hear about the World War II part, but that was a pretty big betrayal in World War I, because he led the 10th Cavalry up San Juan Hill in Cuba,

along with the Rough Riders, along with White Infantry. This battle was one of the first ones, right before the turn of the 20th century, where if you were standing back looking at this battle, there's Black guys, there's White guys, there's Black guys on horses, there's Spanish people coming down here. There's all these people, but the Black soldiers

and the White soldiers were intermingling, fighting together side by side. And they won. And Teddy Roosevelt said, it was all me. I won the battle of Cuba, San Juan and Cuba. But historians actually know these black regiments, specifically the 10th Cavalry, really won this battle in the Spanish-American War down in Cuba.

And it was huge. It put the Buffalo soldiers on the map for really the first time ever in the American popular consciousness. And Black families around America, you could go into their dining room and there'd be a print of a painting of the Battle of San Juan with the Buffalo soldiers storming the hill.

One historian put it that they were there, that generation's Jackie Robinson and Joe Lewis. Like they were the heroes, like I was saying, they were the heroes at a time when Jim Crow Laws were really coming into force at a really, really bleak time for Black America. All of a sudden, there's these Buffalo soldiers that basically helped win the Spanish-American War,

fighting alongside white soldiers, too, and being equal in that respect. And that's why you'll see all those statues right next to Teddy Roosevelt's statues. Exactly, exactly. And you know what? I may have made up that part about General Pershing advocating World War II now that I think about it.

Oh, well, I didn't get to the betrayal thing, Chuck. So when World War I rolled around, he was in charge of, I think, basically everybody in Europe. And he turned his back on his Black regiment and all Black soldiers and basically said, no, you guys fight in your own regiment, so I don't want you fighting side by side. But the French were like, hey, come fight with us.

We'll command you. And that happened. That reminded me, the French were also the first ones to recognize, officially, the Native American code talkers, even before the United States did. Oh, I remember that. And they also used Black aviators in World War I, too. So up with the French, historically speaking.

That's right. There's a teacher. They gave us those fries. Sure. And that bread. You mean freedom fries? Uh-huh, freedom bread. I feel like I'm talking a lot.

Oh, yeah? Am I? I mean, no more than usual. OK, freedom bread. So in World War II, the Buffalo soldier units were used a lot. A lot of times, though, they were not on the front lines. They were stuck to administrative and support duties.

But they did join in combat here and there on both the theaters and the war, mostly toward the end of World War II. But it was a lot of the good that you see coming out of what the Buffalo soldiers did was foundation work and groundwork for desegregating the military, for showing that these guys are just the same as white soldiers. They're just as capable.

They fight just as bravely. And it really kind of laid that groundwork for the desegregation after the war. Yes, like a direct line for it. It's weird, but basically a way to put it is that the white America said, OK, all right, if you will, we'll give you a shot. You go out and serve in battle and let's

see what you can do. And then maybe we'll see from there. And just by being given that one opportunity to show that they could do things that were presumed they couldn't, like act bravely and fight and be a good soldier that was good at being a soldier, they proved that all of these myths about how black people couldn't do these things were wrong.

And that kind of thing opens up some people's eyes to, OK, well, what else do I think about black people that are wrong? And it's weird to think about because on a social level that that's what it takes that people's minds can be changed like that. But historically speaking, in retrospect, that's how it happens. Like one prejudice is tested and then all of a sudden

other prejudices start slowly kind of falling over like Domino's totally very, very slowly, though. Yeah, unfortunately, like Domino's. You can only picture falling fast. I know. Do that in slow mo. It's almost a terrible analogy, almost. So it's crazy to think, but even though desegregation

happened long before this, it takes a while for that to fully happen. And they were Buffalo soldier units in the Korean War. All black units in the Korean War. But it was 1948, I think, that Truman signed this act desegregating the military. Yeah, and I think it took three more years. 1951 was when the final one was disbanded, the 27th.

Right, but that's why I was saying you could trace a direct line of desegregation from the military because that was the first chance that black America had to show that it could be treated equally and that it could act equally. And they showed that and it led to desegregation in the military, and then three years after the actual in-practice desegregation of military

regiments, there was the Brown versus Board of Education ruling, which not in practice, but in theory, desegregated schools. So it went army, schools, and then eventually, socially, it just kept going. But it was because of the Buffalo soldiers and their service, directly, undisputedly. Oh, yeah, I mean, it's crazy to think

as late as the Korean War, though, some of those units were still fighting. Yeah, it is crazy. Because when I think of MASH, it doesn't feel modern, but it doesn't feel like Buffalo soldier territory. Right, the Buffalo soldiers, you think of 19th century American West, not 1950s Korea. No, you don't think of Hawkeye and his gin still.

I guess it was one black character on MASH with the very unfortunate name, but we won't talk about that. I'm not familiar. No, good. I don't remember. All right, well, I think we should take a break and come back and talk about what is, to me,

one of the cooler aspects of this whole story. The Bob Marley song. No, we'll be right back. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s, called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist?

So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough

or you're at the end of the road. Ah, OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear.

And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy.

You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, we're back and we're going to talk about what I think is one of the coolest little parts here of this whole story, which I never knew.

If you've ever been to Sequoia National Park or Yosemite National Park or some other national parks out west and you're hiking a trail or driving down a road, uh, you might have the Buffalo Soldiers to thank for that trail and those roads. Yeah. Uh, they, and it's one of their, their highlight achievements to me is once we establish the national parks, Teddy Roosevelt again, yeah, build statues of him, right, um, you had to enforce this stuff because this was the first time we were like, wait a minute, this is protected land, can't just come in here and take the timber or hunt, you know, the animals

like there are rules now. You set up like, you set aside grazing land, you set aside national parks, libertarians, they take issue with that kind of thing and you need to have Buffalo Soldiers to fight them off. That's right. So from 1891 to 1913, about 25 years or so, these, uh, some of these black regiments were essentially the first park rangers. They didn't have that name at the time, um, but they kept the poachers at bay, uh, stopped

the illegal grazing and the timber thieves, uh, they fought wildfires. Yeah. I didn't get a chance to like really look into this, but I wonder what 1913 wildfire fighting was like. I'll bet it was real dicey. Bucket brigade stuff. Probably like 2020 firefighting is dicey wildfire fighting, but a hundred years ago, man, I'll bet it was.

I can't imagine. Good Lord. But like I said, with the trails and stuff, a lot of, uh, some of the more significant trails and roads, some of the buildings, yeah, some of the older cabins, they were built and constructed by Buffalo Soldiers, which is just super cool. Yeah. So if you find a building in Yosemite or Sequoia national parks, that's from 1891 to 1913. Yes.

Then it was probably built by Buffalo Soldiers or hiking a trail. Yeah. This is all just super cool. Yeah. It's pretty cool. There's a lot of trails around the place too, which is kind of neat. Yeah. Yeah.

Um, so Chuck, the last Buffalo soldier, and I mean like original Buffalo soldier, uh, Mark Matthews, died on September 6, 2005. He was interred at Arlington national cemetery. He was 111 years old and he actually fought under General Pershing in the 10th Cavalry, on the hunt for Pancho Villa. Oh yeah? Yeah. I think, uh, I don't know if we mentioned that.

How many medals of honor? Were there 23? I saw 23. The National Museum of African American History says 18. I'm going to go with them. All right. Somewhere between 18 and 23, let's see that. Yeah.

So, you know, the, I guess the moral of the story is that they did provide this, um, direct line to desegregation, not only through the army, but like you're saying all through America. And sadly, a lot of them did exit the military. Some of them did have a little, uh, higher status and a leg to stand on. Right. Many of them didn't. Uh, they were, there was a study of lynchings in the US that found that black military veterans were targeted, uh, and lynched more than non-veteran black people with the idea, uh, that it was

a real threat in, uh, the racist white South for a black man to leave the army with some rank and some status and guns, guns, feeling good about themselves. Don't forget in the Tulsa massacre episode, it was the World War one vets who were like, uh, no, we're going to go defend this boy from being lynched with guns. They showed up with guns. I think, um, there, I remember in the Black Panther episode two, um, they, they traced a direct line of this, um, this sense of like you need to defend yourself and protect yourself with firearms.

They traced that directly to World War one veterans. Oh yeah. Yeah. So there is a, uh, a terrible logic to that, I guess. Yeah, for sure. Uh, there was also a terrible, um, senator and governor of Mississippi named James, uh, Vardeman, who was just straight up white supremacist, like no matter how you slice it. You could have just said senator from Mississippi in 1917.

Uh, sure. Uh, he's, he spoke to the U S Senate and he really kind of crystallizes how they felt about, uh, black veterans in 1917. On the Senate floor, he said, once you impress the Negro with the fact that he is defending the flag and inflate his untortured, uh, soul with military heirs, his political rights must be respected. Um, and he wasn't saying like, and that's great. Yeah.

So let's respect that. Yeah. This was a warning basically. Right. Uh, over, over, uh, looked, he didn't listen to him, ultimately because they did continue having black soldiers as soldiers and eventually desegregated, which led to desegregation in America, which is pretty great. That's right.

I would love to hear from some current African-American military personnel because I want to know what the current sort of, uh, temperature is as an active service person. Oh, what the racism's like in the military? Yeah. Sure. I'm sure, you know, that there'll be different versions of that story, uh, depending on who you're in contact with and what your particular like platoon is like. Yeah.

I wonder though, cause the military is like some kind of weird simulacrum of American society. It is. Um, I wonder if it's more racist or less racist. I think there's a chance you could go either way. I mean, my guess is less, you know, my, uh, like I said, my brother-in-law before and as a Marine and pretty high up, you could say, and every time I've been on these Marine bases a lot and it all seems like they're all sort of, you know, got that thinking,

that group thing going on, like we're, we're just Marines, like none of us are a color. We're green. Well, I've seen full metal jacket and there are a lot of racist stuff in there. No. I'm sure. Okay. Yeah. Could go either way.

It could go either way. I would like to hear, um, that as well. I'd also like to hear from any Native American listeners to know what, what they were taught about Buffalo soldiers to what was passed down within the different tribes. Yeah. Cause they contacted all sorts of different tribes from the, the Lakota Sioux up in the north down to the Apaches in New Mexico and Mexico. Yeah.

Um, yeah. Teach us everyone. Yeah. We'll, we'll read them on listener mail. Uh, if you want to know more about Buffalo soldiers, there's a lot of really great stuff to read. Uh, and you can't really go wrong with a guy named Frank Schubert, who is a scholar of them, of Buffalo soldiers, and he's got a lot of articles on the web and I believe some

books too. Um, and since I said Frank Schubert, it's time for listener mail. Oh, no, it's not. Oh, that's right. You know what it's time for? Hit them, Chuck. It is time for administrative details. So we haven't done this in a little while.

If you're new to the show, administrative details is where we take a couple of minutes. We're going to do this on this episode and the next. You got that straight. To read out some thank yous. Tell them, Chuck. For some of the kindnesses that people throw our way. That's right. For some of the physical totems, like t-shirts and buttons and to confectionaries like cookies

and pastries and cheeses. I like that. What I did not do on this one, and I feel bad because you probably did, is write down all the names of all the postcards and letters. I wrote down the ones that I, yeah, I think I've got basically everybody and we should say we almost always miss somebody or a few. So if we don't say your name and you have not been thanked on a previous administrative detail, please get in touch with us so we can correct that.

That's right. And if you have a letter or a postcard that is on my desk, I'll include those in the next batch because now I feel bad. Bam. All right, let's go through these. Oh, and there's also some people who I don't have names for, but we do have the items. So you can also write in and be like, that was me. That's right.

For example, the very nice person who gave us almond cookies and whiskey cake at our Orlando show. All right. Our live show in Orlando, don't remember or don't have the name of who gave us that, but thank you for them. Katie from Davis, California, sent us some cool little notebooks. They were little notebooks like Schemes was like the title of one of them. Oh, right.

We can write down your schemes, band names, just sort of fun names on the covers of these notebooks. Yeah, thanks a lot. A huge, huge thanks as always to our good friends, Hilary and Mike Lozar and their good friends, the people at Flathead Lake cheese for all the cheese. That's right. Flathead Lake cheese is far and away my favorite cheese in the world. It's good cheese.

They make very good cheese. You guys cannot go wrong. Just go get some Flathead Lake cheese and you'll love it. Yeah, a lot of, I don't know if they specialize in Gouda, but we seem to be on the Gouda mailing list. They make a hopped Gouda that is my favorite. Have you had it? Oh yeah.

Oh my gosh. It's yum. It has hops in it. I know. It's good cheese. And while we're on the Lozars, Hilary and Mike and Coop, I just got this today. They sent us aprons, word butcher aprons. That is so appropriate.

So it's a knife going into the lettering of a word butcher because I don't know if you guys know this, but we are well known to mispronounce everything. Yeah. To butcher words. I knew you were going to do that. So Smoddy from France sent us a tea card with some late two Marmot's tea attached. Thank you Smoddy. Yeah.

Jess Fowl sent us his game that he designed, philosophy the game, or better yet, drunk philosophy. Nice. That's a great name. Katie Barnes from the Barnes Made soap company for the wonderful soap. All of them are really good, but I strongly recommend the Autumn Fig and the Mariner Brass brine bar. Good stuff.

Oh, you can head over to Barnes Made, B-A-R-N-E-S-M-A-D-E dot com for some of Katie's soaps. Becky in France sent us planetary coasters that she made in her studio is Seaford studio dot com. That is C-E-P-H-E-I-D studio dot com. If you want some planetary coasters, they are pretty, spacey and awesome. Kevin Reuter gave us Basil Hayden and Bullet Rye. You remember that at our show at the Bell House and even wrapped them up as Christmas presents.

That's right. Which is just lovely. Thanks a lot, Kevin. And funny enough, at the show, somebody asked us what drink we would want to have on a desert island if we could only have one. And both of us were saying gin drinks and he was like, well, I guess I guessed wrong with the Basil Hayden and the Bullet and I was like, no, dude, you nailed it. We're all inclusive.

Our buddy Van Nosteren, I feel like he sent us more than this. So if you have something else, let us know. We just hung out with him and his wonderful wife, Leah, in Seattle. He sent us some records. Some awesome records. Smurfs, Disco Duck, Lawrence Welk, and John Denver, the John Denver Muppets Christmas. And you know what? Van Nosteren gave us books before and one of them was about, oh, I can't say yet because

that. Oh, really? But he gave us a book about the live show years ago and I never got around to reading it. Oh, that's right. They reminded me after the show they were like, you know, we sent you that book, you dummy. Oh, yeah.

So I'll have to read it now. Will and Katie Lynn Lee sent us coffee from Coffee by Design. So nice. Delish. Let's see. Nicole Collins, D.O., Doctor of Osteopathy, sent us a copy of her book, Insight, which is on vision, like real vision, and the miracle that is vision. So check it out.

It's called Insight. I thought you were going to say D.O., Doctor of Metal. I was delivered by a D.O. And one of the things they do is they adjust you, like you're a baby and they adjust you like a chiropractor when you're born. I was born Breach, so the D.O. adjusted me in reverse order and apparently everyone in the delivery room gave them a golf clap afterward. And you waved your hand and said, thank you, everyone.

Yeah, thank you. I have a taste for this applause thing. Fart-kirgled fart. Indigo Proof from Portland sent me a gift certificate for one free denim repair because I complained about my Levi's blowing out, so they said, send me those jeans and we'll fix them for you. Yeah, very nice. That's Indigo Proof.

And where else did they fix jeans? Portland, Oregon. That is a jean fix in town for sure. I've got a super old one from not this past October, but the October before last, Chuck. Wow. Do you remember Kathy with a K.Tosh at, I believe, our Phoenix show or Salt Lake City show, one of the two, gave us lasso. Real live lasso.

Rope and rope. And she said, go on to YouTube and learn how to lasso now. And I've yet to do that, but I still have my lasso, so thanks a lot, Kathy. Me too. Yeah, it's not only cool, because I will try and learn that one day, but it looks cool hanging on a wall. For sure. And also, I think Kathy is a postal worker, so hopefully she dug our going postal episode.

I haven't heard from her. That's right. Email is Kathy and let us know how we did. I have a correction to read, but I'll just wait for listener mail for that one. Oh, yeah. That was me. That was my bad. Was it just you?

I think so. Somebody else made it seem like it was me too. How many more should we do for this one? Let's do three more. Okay. Anna Parker. She is a painter and muralist who did this lovely painting of my three dogs, two of which are now dearly departed, but it's very, very sweet.

And speaking of which, you can find those her work at sweettmurals.com. Oh, yes, very nice. Let's see, Lance Roper, who's my boy from Toledo, who is from actual coffee in Toledo, sent me some really good coffee. So check out actual coffee in Toledo. Actual coffee. Yes. Betty Epperleis and his voodoo dolls of us.

Oh, I want to know who made that. Those are so cool. They are, yeah. They're like really cute and they're laden with little Easter eggs. Like I'm holding all kinds of crazy things that all relate to shows. I'm holding a magic mushroom. Really? Yeah.

Well, that's from a show. But they had no pins. We should point out. So they weren't voodoo dolls that were out to harm us. Her son, Josh, introduced her to the show and her husband. Way to go, Josh. So thanks, Betty. Yeah, Momo's riding my foot on mine, too.

Oh, really? Yeah. That's very cute. Let's see. The wooden egg and special egg coasters, SYSK egg coasters, from the very kind people at Good Egg World. All right, I got one more for this dish. Adam Peterson, this was a really cool gift.

He sent us two bottles of Coca-Cola from the very last run of returnable bottles that Coca-Cola ever did. Oh, wow. There were small family-run bottler in Winona, Minnesota. And he said his in-laws had run it since 1932. So these were the last run of returnables that came off the line and they're even stamped with their little family bottler name and everything. Oh, that's really cool.

That's very cool. All right, last one, this one came from the Toronto show. A guy named Phil Bowen gave us each a prosthetic eye. Oh, man. That's one of the best ever. One of the best gifts either one of us has ever gotten. It's so cool. So thanks a lot for our prosthetic eyes, Phil.

We still have them. I think there's a picture of us wearing them, too. Yeah. Okay. If you want to get in touch with us just to say hi or to send us something, it doesn't matter. You can go into StuffYouShouldKnow.com and follow our social links there, I think. And as always, you can send us an email.

Wrap it up, spank it on the bottom and send it off to StuffPodcasts at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. On the podcast, HeyDude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to HeyDude, the 90s called on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart Podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life.

Tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.