Black Regimental Chaplains
The primary two-fold role of the Regimental Chaplain consisted of developing educational programs to assist Black soldiers in learning to read, write, and perform basic arithmetic, as well as strengthen the spiritual well-being of their soldier congregation. Originally, white chaplains performed in this capacity for Black regiments. In 1884, the U.S. Army commissioned the first Black chaplain, who reported to the 9th Cavalry then serving at Fort Riley, Kansas. In total, during the nineteenth century, five Black clergymen became Regimental Chaplains.
Henry V. Plummer, 9th Cavalry, 1884-1894
Born on June 30, 1844, Henry V. Plummer’s lot was that of a formerly enslaved field worker in Prince George’s County, Maryland. The Civil War offered a means to break his chains of bondage. During that conflict, Plummer joined the U.S. Navy, serving for sixteen months, until obtaining his honorable discharge, during the summer of 1865. While in the service, he learned to read and write. Thereafter, he continued his education with funds from this job and his outside income as a political worker. Plummer’s savings enabled him to attend Wayland Seminary.
After completing studies, Plummer served various civilian congregations until white Chaplain Charles C. Pierce resigned from the 9th Cavalry. Plummer vigorously acted to replace Pierce. He secured letters of recommendation from numerous clergymen, and most significantly, a letter from Frederick Douglas to support his bid for a chaplaincy. In 1884, he succeeded in his efforts. In that year, he reported to his first military station at Fort Riley, Kansas.
In 1885, Plummer transferred to Wyoming with the 9th Cavalry where he remained dedicated to the educational needs of his soldier-students. Regrettably, nine years later, Plummer faced a court-martial that alleged he participated in a celebration where he drank, supplied liquor to enlisted men, used vulgar language, and engaged in other disgraceful conduct. These complaints came from a sergeant whom the chaplain previously disciplined for failure to perform his duties. Perhaps a long simmering grudge caused this non-commissioned officer to turn on Plummer. In addition, the post commander at Fort Robinson distrusted Plummer. Both that officer and the regimental commander evidently viewed the clergyman as a “disturbing element” within the command. After an eleven-day hearing, the court pronounced the chaplain guilty. His possibly unfair dismissal from the service brought an abrupt end to a promising military ministry.
Allen Allensworth 24th Infantry, 1886-1906
Allen Allensworth, hailed from Kentucky. He had been enslaved before the Civil War, escaped from his bondage, and fled north. Allensworth, like Plummer, joined the Union Navy. After becoming a civilian, he sought self-improvement at first with the Freedman’s Bureau, and later he entered college to complete a degree in divinity.
By 1885, a vacancy for chaplaincy of the 24th Infantry inspired the clergyman to seek a commission. He rallied supporters and wrote then U.S. President Grover Cleveland that he relished the “opportunity to show, in behalf of the race, that a Negro can be an officer and a gentleman.” He soon gained the position. After that, Chaplain Allensworth patiently attended to his duties for two decades after his appointment in 1886 with the 24th U.S. Infantry.
During his twenty years in uniform, he served as both spiritual leader and primary educator for his military congregation. He retired in 1906, with the rank of lieutenant colonel, the first Black officer to attain this rank. He then went on to lead a movement that resulted in the establishment of a Black self-sustaining community in California’s San Joaquin Valley that would bear his name. Today, Allensworth is a California state park. He died on September 14, 1914, in Monrovia, California after being struck by a motorcycle. This extraordinary champion of education and equal rights would be remembered as having “a tolerant, genial and kindly attitude toward all men.”
Theophilus G. Steward, 25th Infantry, 1891-1907
Theophilus Gould Steward traced his lineage as a free Black to pre-Revolutionary War roots. Steward’s impressive resume before, during, and after his days in the U.S. Army revealed a life of achievement from time spent as a school teacher, to work in a bank; extensive travel including to Haiti; graduation at the top of his class in divinity school; several notable and successful civilian pastorates; performance as a missionary, and a prestigious professorship and position as an administrator at Wilberforce University where he served until his death on January 11, 1924. It is little wonder that he has been the subject of two thoughtful biographies whose titles reveal his passionate championship of racial justice.
Steward also received mention as a literary worker, whose writing “found ready acceptance with editors of magazines and leading journals. Such men as these verify the statements that the mental development required in military tactics enables the soldier to enter the literary world and successfully compete with the most logical writer of the present day.” The Cleveland Gazette of August 8, 1891, further proclaimed that he was “one of the most scholarly ministers of the A.M.E. Church.”
Assuredly, this Army chaplain proved a prolific, powerful author, whose prose often supported his soldier flock. His publications reflected the continual advocacy, as he wrote, for the “four regiments of colored troops in the service” that had demonstrated “during peace the high character or good order and military discipline that their friends expected and that in the encounters with the Indians they have shown a skill and bravery equal to white troops.”
George Prioleau, 9th Cavalry, 10th Cavalry, and 25th Infantry
Reverend George Washington Prioleau enjoyed the distinction of serving with three of the four so-called Buffalo Soldier regiments. Born into enslavement in Charleston, South Carolina, on May 15, 1856, Prioleau, completed his early education in the public schools of his native city, then went on to Cardoza Military Academy, Clafin University, and Wilberforce University.
Prior to his commissioning, from 1889 to 1895, he taught as a professor of Pastoral Theology and Homiletics at Payne Theological Seminary, Wilberforce University. Once appointed a chaplain, he traveled to Fort Robinson, Nebraska where he reported to the 9th Cavalry’s regimental headquarters. When the United States went to war with Spain, as the case with Chaplains Allensworth and Steward, he set off on special recruiting service. This meant he did not embark for Cuba with the unit. He did sail to the Philippines, however, where he spent two tours of duty with the 9th Cavalry. The chaplain later transferred to the 10th Cavalry with postings along the United States-Mexico border.
Throughout his chaplaincy Reverend Prioleau perceived his main mission entailed encouragement of his enlisted congregation, whom he viewed as being separated from “agreeable associations” of their families and homes to be thrust into bachelor barracks amid “an atmosphere pregnated [sic] with evil and sin.” He viewed the stratified and segregated society of a nineteenth century frontier post as a compartmentalized world. At the end of his military career, he transferred for a time to the 25th Infantry.
William T. Anderson, 10th Cavalry, 1897-1910
Another “sky-pilot” (nickname for chaplains coined in the 1800s) who weathered enslavement and subsequently became associated with the pivotal Wilberforce University was born on August 20, 1859, in Seguin, Texas. William T. Anderson attended that influential institution before moving on to Howard University, Washington, D.C., and Cleveland Homeopathic Medical Clinic where he graduated as “first of a very large class.” Further, Wilberforce granted him a doctor of divinity degree on June 27, 1896, making him “perhaps the most educated African American chaplain of his era.”
Anderson’s academic credentials permitted him to carry on a medical practice while simultaneously serving as pastor to several congregations of the A.M.E. Church. He subsequently joined the 10th Cavalry at Fort Assiniboine, Montana. In nearly all his endeavors Anderson resembled his fellow Black army chaplains. Yet, he stood apart from his clergymen contemporaries in several ways. First, when the 10th Cavalry departed from Fort Assiniboine, in 1898, for combat in Cuba, he remained behind and shouldered the unprecedented tasks of holding the fort as post exchange officer, quartermaster, and commissary while concurrently assuming command of the post! In so doing, he apparently became the first African American to command a U.S. Army installation. Not until nearly a decade later would Charles Young assume such a responsibility at Fort Huachuca, Arizona.
Beyond that, during the 1898 Spanish American War, Anderson would be “the only African American chaplain sent to a foreign land”. All his Black peers remained stateside on recruiting duty. In this regard, he became one of the few chaplains who “for the first time … accompanied American troops into a land not contiguous to the United States” as official non-combatants defined by Articles I and II in accordance with the 1864 Geneva Convention.
By August 1907, Anderson’s exemplary performance brought him a promotion to major. At that grade his duties continued beyond those strictly associated with chaplains. After a posting to Fort William McKinley in the Philippines, Anderson returned to the United States. Once stateside, he accompanied the 10th Cavalry to Fort Ethan Allen, Vermont, where he retired on January 10, 1910. He and his spouse Sada set up household at Wilberforce followed by travel abroad. Chaplain Anderson remained active until at age 85. This extraordinary Christian soldier passed away quietly on August 21, 1934.
Further Reading: Alan K. Lamm, Five Black Preachers in Army Blue, 1884-1901: The Buffalo Soldier Chaplains (Lewiston, NY: Mellen Press, 1998).