Enslavement to Enlistment: Refiguring Opportunity for African Americans in the Military

ABSTRACT

What does “opportunity” look like for African Americans in the United States military? While the military has been viewed as a vehicle for protecting freedom, it has done so in conditions of racial capitalism and settler colonialism. Through these analytical lenses, opportunity is generally idealized as property, but we propose that Black individuals associated with the military may have seen opportunity as relationality through land and place. We discuss Black constructions of opportunity at the military site of Fort Snelling in Minnesota during the nineteenth century, from enslaved individuals to enlisted Black Regulars garrisoned in the 1880s. Changing expectations of labor and social landscape shaped these opportunities, configured within structures of racism which were themselves adapting to the efforts of African Americans to seek opportunity. We offer archaeological materials and historical documents for potential use in public interpretation that attends to both oppression and creative pursuits of opportunity.

KEYWORDS:

• U.S. military
• slavery
• black regulars
• settler colonialism
• critical Indigenous studies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The soldier’s first name may have been a nickname. A thorough search of the National Park Service Soldiers and Sailors database turned up only a James Carron who had served in the 82nd Regiment of the US Colored Troops. This outspoken soldier remains, for now, largely unknown.

2 Though it is outside of the scope of this article, a closer reading of the records of these three court cases, particularly the testimony of the petitioners, would likely yield a more nuanced view of how land and territorial association were perceived.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Katherine Hayes

Katherine Hayes is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and a faculty affiliate to American Indian Studies and the Heritage Studies and Public History graduate program at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

Sophie Minor

Sophie Minor is a collections associate in the Archaeology Department of the Minnesota Historical Society, and a Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.