The Palimpsest

Nichols, Jeff

Index for 1993 Palimpsest

Bunkers, Suzanne

In Search of Susanna

Widmer Blake, Edith Gallo

An Italian-American Girlhood in Iowa's Coal Country

The Palimpsest, vol.74 no.1, Spring 1993

Marshall, Gordon

Hired Men: Iowa's Unsung Farm Resource

Gutjahr, Paul

English

Hundreds of Sould Lie in the Balance': An Eastern Congregational Minister Ponders Moving West to Iowa

Auge, Thomas

The Priest Behind the Legends: Father John Alleman

Kachel, Douglas

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Fort Des Moines and its 
African-American Troops
in 1903/04
by Douglas Kachel
A
l t h o u g h  m a n y  iovvans are
aware that Fort.Des Moines in Des 
Moines was the site of the Colored 
Officers Training Camp during the 
first world war, most do not know that .African- 
American soldiers were actually stationed 
there much earlier — within the first months of 
its opening in 1903. Although this early chapter 
in the history of Fort Des Moines is a short one, 
it adds to our understanding of tum-of-the- 
centurv attitudes about the military and about 
race relations. a
Fort Des Moines was the third fort in Iowa to 
bear that name. The other two were built in
1835 near Montrose in Lee Countv, and in¥ *
1843 at the confluence of the Des Moines and f 
Raccoon rivers. Fort Des Moines No. 3 opened 
in mid-November 1903 five miles south of 
downtown Des Moines. The occasion was 
marked with parades, ceremonies, barbecues, 
reduced railroad rates, and considerable atten­
tion from the press. The Des Moines Register 
ami Leader explained the hoopla this way:
The opening of an army post in Iowa is an 
event that calls for more than a local celebra-
“dedicating  th e  flag at the  new  FORT DES MOINES.” 
November 1903 opening ceremonies completed local 
efforts to locate a cavalry post in Des Moines.
42 THE PALIMPSEST
I he romance and excitement of the cavalry in Americans minds were fueled by memories of the Civil War and the 
Indian Wars. Here, a practice charge by the Fourteenth Cavalry at Fort I)cs Moines (ca. 1930).
tion. The first fort of regular soldiers within the 
confines oflowa is to be dedicated and opened 
this week. Heretofore, lowans have been 
forced to go to St. Louis, Omaha, Chicago, or 
St. Paul to see regular soldiers and regular 
army encampments and forts.
John A. T. Hull — Civil War hero, editor, 
two-term lieutenant governor, five-term con­
gressman, and chair of the important Commit­
tee on Military Affairs in the House of 
Representatives — is often credited with the 
idea for locating the fort in Des Moines. Hull 
may have actually received the idea from oth­
ers — including S. B. Ketfer, the city’s park 
commissioner, and Major J. G. Galbraith, who 
was in charge of the army ’s recruiting station in 
Des Moines. Covering the dedication, the Des 
Moines Register and Leader reported that 
when Keffer “wrote to Congressman Hull 
about the fort, he had in mind the help to local 
labor, the benefit to the business interest of the 
city and the addition of a park to Des Moines. 
Another article noted that “Major Galbraith is 
generally known among military men and in 
official circles with having been the first to
suggest the desirability of an army post located 
in Des Moines.”
Regardless of who suggested the idea, it was 
Congressman Hull who first introduced legis­
lation in 1894 and worked for its eventual pas­
sage in 1900. A Register and Leader editorial 
commented that the task was a hard one, for it 
became necessary not only to convince the 
federal authorities that the post was needed 
here but the local people that it was wanted 
here. Apparently the “opposition, indif­
ference, and ridicule’ from “certain elements 
of Des Moines society were overcome. Fol­
lowing the accustomed procedure, a citizen 
committee headed by F. M. Hubbell raised 
forty thousand dollars, purchased four hun­
dred acres, and turned the property over to the 
War Department.
Fort Des Moines was to be a cavalry post, 
which embodied all the romance and dash that 
the cavalry still represented to Americans. 
Although construction began July 12, 1901, the 
Iowa State Bystander newspaper that month 
called for citizens to be patient: ‘ No one should 
anticipate the actual location of a squadron of
SPRING 1993 43
Construction began in July 1901 for Fort Des Moines, after a citizens committee raised funds, bought four hundred 
acres, and turned the land over to the federal government.
cavalry- at the post short of 1903. When com­
pleted Des Moines will have the model cavalry 
post of the army.”
Most Americans revered the cavalry' as the 
“true army, recalling gallant images of cavalry- 
in the Civil War, in the series of yvars with 
Native American tribes, and, most recently, in 
Cuba and the Philippines. In 1908 The Mid­
western, a Des Moines booster magazine, 
articulated this cavalry' mystique in an article 
about the U.S. Second Cavalry, whose history 
had been “an integral part of the military his­
tory' of the country'“ and “in the storm center of/  /
everv war. The Midwestern continued, “For it 
is the horse that makes the cavalry- the most 
picturesque branch of the serv ice. The infantry 
lias been called the backbone of the army, and 
the cavalry its eyes and ears. It is the flying 
squadron, alert, mobile, here today and there 
tomorrow. It is the incarnation of the spirit of 
battle, and the cavalry unit is the irresistible 
combination of horse and man; the modern 
Centaur of the old fable.
W
HEN FORT DES MOINES offi­
cially opened on November 13, 
1903, pomp and patriotic fervor 
embraced the citizens of Des 
Moines at the dedication of yvhat the press 
billed the the largest and only exclusive cav­
alry post in the United States. The Register 
and Leader commented that the fort “means 
almost as much as the location here of the state 
capitol; its dedication is one of the most impor­
tant events in Des Moines for half a century.
In the days preceding the event, thousands 
had taken advantage of reduced railroad rates 
to arrive in Des Moines for the festivities. Free 
trolley rides took car after car of passengers to 
the neyv fort. The Des Moines Register and 
Leader noted that the crowd of25,000 yvas “but 
a portion of the throng that would have been 
present had there been adequate transporta­
tion facilities. ” (Adding extra trolley cars for the 
occasion had overloaded the system and 
slowed the cars dow-n.)
Crowds lined downtown Des Moines and
44 THE PALIMPSEST
applauded a parade of dignitaries, many in the 
new curiosity — automobiles. The autos and 
more than a hundred carriages, each lavishly 
decorated with American flags, bunting, and 
flowers, proceeded to the fort. The first car­
riage held General John Bates, Governor A. B. 
Cummins, Congressman Hull, and J. B. 
Olmsted, chairman of the citizens’ dedication 
committee.
There at the fort was Troop E of the Eighth 
Cavalry, splendidly dressed in blue, high-col­
lar tunics with brass buttons and wearing tall, 
black boots. With capes flowing and sabers at 
their sides, the mounted detachment must 
have matched the public’s expectations of what
a cavalrv should be.0
However, the splendid cavalrv7 troop stayed 
less than a month after the opening cere­
monies. Then the two dozen soldiers under 
Sergeant Thomas Sozensky returned to their 
regiment at Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis. 
Once again Des Moines would have to wait for
the cavalrv to arrive.
0
PPARENTLY General Bates had 
been so impressed with the new 
fort’s “magnitude . . . and the excel­
lence of the site,’ according to the 
Des Moines Register and Leader, that he 
issued orders for infantry to immediately 
occupy the new fort. Three weeks later — 
much to the surprise of many citizens — two 
companies did indeed arrive, com­
posed of 127 African-American soldiers.
The press reported that as Companies C and 
L of the black 25th Infantry tumbled off the 
train on the morning of December 3, 1903, 
the advent of troops created a sensation and 
large crowds gathered to watch the sturdy col­
ored veterans as they swung along with the 
regulation marching step.’ The Register and 
Leader noted “these colored troops would be 
in [the] charge of five white officers com­
manded by Captain J. D. Leitch and Captain 
R- L. Bush. (In 1903 there were four African-
American regiments — the 24th and 25th 
infantries and the 9th and 10th cavalries. These 
were the maximum number of black units as 
established by Congress in 1869.)
Much to the disappointment of many Des 
Moines citizens, not only were infantry troops 
occupying the long sought and highly roman­
ticized cavalry post, but the troops’ sole 
responsibility was to guard forty military con­
victs sent from overcrowded Jefferson Barracks 
in St. Louis. Infantry guarding military7 con­
victs — where was the gallant cavalry practic­
ing their drills on horseback, which the citizens 
of Des Moines had expected? The Register and 
Leader reassured its readers that “Fort Des 
Moines will be a cavalry post but until the 
horsemen can arrive it will be occupied by 
infantry.’ According to General Bates, the 
black troops would be at the fort until the 
cavalry7 returned from Manila the next spring.
Nevertheless, some Des Moines citizens 
must have been vocal about the arrival of 
African-American troops, given the response 
two weeks later in the Iowa State Bystander, a 
black-owned and -operated newspaper based 
in Des Moines. In an article titled Wrong 
Idea,’ the Bystander editor challenged the 
rumor “that because a garrison of Afro Ameri­
can troops has been sent to the new $ 1 ,CKK),CK)0 
army post in Des Moines the voters are 
enraged and threaten to defeat Captain Hull 
for renomination.” The editor argued, “It has 
been proven to be a fact that the Afro American 
soldiers are the best in the United States so far 
as sobriety and good behavior are concerned as 
well as in many other essentials in the makeup 
of good soldiers and it is a shame that they 
receive such outrageous treatment by the peo­
ple whom they serve so faithfully and well.” 
The editor added, “No real man or set of gen­
tlemen to our knowledge are enraged at our 
Congressmen on this account.
Then another concern was addressed — this 
time by Congressman Hull. Apparently orga­
nized labor feared that the militarv convicts 
(whom the black soldiers were guarding) would 
be used as a labor battalion for the remaining 
construction work at the fort, thereby “taking 
wages from their pockets. Hull tried to mollify 
these fears through a story in the Register and 
Leader: “Convicts will not be engaged in work
SPRING 1993 45
Editor John L. Thompson and his lotca State Bystander 
covered social events at Fort Des Moines and argued 
that “Afro American soldiers are the best in the United 
States so far as sobriety and good behavior . . . [and] in 
many other essentials in the makeup of good soldiers.’’
at the Fort Des Moines Army Post, he said. 
“It is not the intention of the war department to 
utilize these prisoners in the work of construc­
tion at Fort Des Moines in any way that would 
interfere with the employment of laborers.”
A
FTER THIS initial controversy, it 
appears that at least the African- 
American citizens of Des Moines 
and the black soldiers at the fort 
enjoyed amicable relations. Over the months 
the soldiers had several parties that black cit­
izens of Des Moines attended. For example, 
the Bystander reported that Company C gave a 
social reception on December 23, 1903. Danc­
ing, conversation, and games were the amuse­
ments. Music was furnished by a “mandolin
club and at 10 oclock the party entered a 
spacious dining hall for a five-course supper 
all cooked and served by the members of the 
Company.”
If the reception had been held a week later, 
conversation mav well have centered on the 
attempted lynching of two black males in 
Council Bluffs, some hundred miles west of 
Des Nloines. The December 28 Register and 
Leader reported that Mob Cries for Lives of 
Negroes” and described how “a thousand men 
surged the county jail, and broke down the 
door to get at the cringing negroes” charged 
with robbing and assaulting two women. At the 
last minute, the mob was pacified.
On March 18, 1904, soldiers of Company L 
gave an elaborate reception at the fort. .After 
the dancing program the sixty guests pro­
ceeded to the dining area in a “grand march’ 
led by Bystander editor J. L. Thompson. The 
halls were all decorated with flags and Japanese 
lanterns and an elegant, five-course meal was 
served. The affair was written up in the 
Bystander.
In an adjacent column in the Bystander, 
however, an editorial had a less festive tone. 
Titled Is Mob Spirit Growing,” the article 
asserted that race hatred i$ constantly growing 
stronger, and the breach between the two 
races seems to be widening. ” This article was in 
reaction to several lynchings of African-Ameri­
can men elsew here in the nation. The 
Bystander asked boldly, “Can America long 
exist with such unfair treatment of one-tenth of 
her population, or will the righteous con­
science of the broad minded Americans arouse 
itself to the true responsibility of righting those 
wrongs, destroying race hatred and ceasing the 
organization of those lawless mob murderers?
The Iowa State Bystander often covered 
more events involving blacks or interpreted 
them differently than the Des Moines Register 
and Leader and the Evening Tribune. A 
decisively Republican paper, especially in its 
formative years, the Bystander expressed its 
goal as “bettering the relationship between the 
colored and white citizens. Although its jour­
nalists regularly reported national stories about 
lynchings, discrimination, and other racial 
problems, the Bystander was more aceom- 
modational than confrontational or militant. In
46 THE PALIMPSEST
fA /V
1
•;:r::::rrrr.-.-..::
u> -
-  » C>1
* -
•. ■
■ -  «:-..
A guard paces across the entrance of Fort Des Moines, 1908. Few images of the fort in 1903 exist.
comparison, the white-oriented Register and 
Leader and Evening Tribune were charac­
teristic of most newspapers in this period, in 
that their news coverage of African-Americans 
was sparse and often negative. Yet in fairness, 
these two papers occasionally lauded blacks, 
questioned prejudice, and often lambasted rac­
ism in the American South.
W
HILE THE African-American
soldiers were stationed in Des 
Moines, there is no evidence that 
they attended social functions off 
post. Historians know little about what Des 
Moines social opportunities wrere available to 
its black citizens at the beginning of the twen­
tieth centur>r. Writing about Des Moines of 
1918, historian Leola Nelson Bergmann noted 
in 1948 that “except for a public dance hall, 
described as more or less of a dive, and a 
Masonic Hall there were no public recreational 
centers for negroes.’ In general, black troops 
stationed near American cities seemed to be 
carefully monitored by their white officers, 
granted fewer passes than white soldiers, and 
were often virtually cut off from the existing 
social life of the city. According to Charles
Williams’s Sidelights on Negro Soldiers (1923), 
Sometimes the negroes were denied the priv­
ilege of visiting the cantonment cities for fear 
that trouble might arise. One very effective 
means of restriction was the establishment of a 
state of quarantine. While conditions may not 
have been so restrictive in Des Moines, it 
would appear that the soldiers in Companies C 
and L had very limited opportunity to leave the 
post for any length of time.
On April 22, 1904, a farewell reception for 
the two Companies C and L was held before 
they departed for their regular station (which 
appears to have been Fort Niobrara, Nebras­
ka). By early May, the white troops of the 
Eleventh Cavalry returned from the Philip­
pines under the command of Colonel Earl D. 
Thomas and were stationed at Fort Des 
Moines. Here was the much-heralded cavalrvy
for which the citizens of Des Moines had long 
waited.
Yet on May 13 the Bystander reported that 
Colonel Thomas had ordered his troops to turn 
in at 8 p . m . due to the "results of criticism on 
the part of certain individuals regarding the 
behavior of the soldiers. ” The Bystander noted 
that “the privates are a bit sore at the parties 
w ho brought about the condition of affairs. 
They argue that they have just returned from 
the Philippines where they seldom saw white 
people and ought to be allowed a free rein for a
SPRING 1993 47
“No frowning, grim looking fort is this, but a place to delight the eye and the spirit of him who approaches. Photo and 
quotation from May 1908 The Midwestern, a Des Moines booster magazine.
little while until they got back in touch with 
humanity.”
The Bystander added, And they are white 
soldiers. Company L and C of the Twenty-fifth 
Infantry was here for several months, and their 
commanding officers never had to issue any 
such orders, and just to think, the white boys
have not been here two weeks vet and have*
made themselves very obnoxious.
Not until June 1917 would African-American 
soldiers again be stationed at Fort Des Moines. 
This time the fort would be a training camp for 
black officers, the first such camp in America. 
During World War II, the fort would be the 
first training center for the Women’s Army 
Corps. Because of these programs during the 
two world wars, Fort Des Moines has played an 
important role in Iowa’s military history. Nev­
ertheless, the fort’s first months, in which it 
barracked black infantry soldiers, represents 
an intriguing episode also worthy of note. Like­
wise, the press coverage of the fort during this 
period begins to reveal mainstream expecta­
tions and attitudes about the military and about 
race in turn-of-the-century Iowa. □
NOTE ON SOURCES
Major primary sources for this article are the Iowa State 
Bystander and the Des Moines Register and Leader. 
Other sources include Johnson Brigham, History of 
Des Moines and Polk County, Iowa, vol. 1, (1911); and 
Charles H Williams, Sidelights on Segro Soldiers (1923).
Other sources are well recognized for their coverage of 
the fort's later history. For example, see Emmett J. 
Scott’s The American Segro in World War I (1969), writ­
ten shortly after Scott’s unprecedented position as Special 
Assistant to the Secretary of War, probably the highest 
ranking black in the Woodrow W ilson administration. 
Charles Kellogg’s A Histonj o f the National Association 
fo r  the Advancement o f Colored People, vol. 1, 
1909-1920 (1967), offers a detailed analysis of the NAACP 
and others in calling for the establishment of the first 
black officers training camp, eventually located in 
Des Moines in 1917 See also Leola Nelson Bergmann, 
The Negro in Iowa,’ Iowa Journal of History and Pol­
itics, 46 (1948); Charles Garvin, The Negro in the Special 
Service of the T S Army," Journal o f Negro History 
(Summer 1943); Ruth A Gallaher, “Fort Des Moines in 
Iowa History,’ Iowa and War (April 1919); several arti­
cles in The Midwestern (May 1908, Sept. 1909, July 1910); 
and Gerald W. Patton s War and Race: The Black Officer 
in the American Military, 1915-1941 (1981). \e t  tnese 
sources lack information on the fort’s earliest years
The archives at the U.S. Army Reserve Center on the 
grounds of the old Fort Des Moines also hold historical 
information.
The original, annotated manuscript of this article is in 
The Palimpsest production files. State Historical Society 
of Iowa.
48 THE PALIMPSEST


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Index for 1993 Palimpsest

In Search of Susanna

An Italian-American Girlhood in Iowa's Coal Country

The Palimpsest, vol.74 no.1, Spring 1993

Hired Men: Iowa's Unsung Farm Resource

Hundreds of Sould Lie in the Balance': An Eastern Congregational Minister Ponders Moving West to Iowa

The Priest Behind the Legends: Father John Alleman

Fort Des Moines and its African-American Troops in 1903/04

A Reunion of Images: Reassembling Peale's Vision

Carrie Lane Chapman Catt and her Mason City Experience

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