In 1898, when the United States intervened in the Cuban War for Independence, it seemed to offer black Americans the opportunity to use military service as a means to buttress their calls for full recognition as citizens. Many African Americans desired to use military service as a means to shore up political patronage and also to buttress their challenges to disfranchisement, lynching, and segregation. Others hoped it would translate into improved social standing, while some had personal aspirations to prove their manhood or support their families. Finally, some men enlisted with hopes of taking up the cause of Antonio Maceo, the slain Cuban Revolutionary leader.
This paper will examine the multiple links between African American political activism and the United States' involvement in the Cuban Insurgent Army’s war for Independence from Spain. In it, I examine the overlapping and entangled histories of two regiments that emanated from important centers of African American political activism—Illinois and Louisiana—and situates them within the history of the intervention. Charged with disarming the revolutionary forces and restoring peace once on Cuban soil, black soldiers found themselves at the center of a conflict over how to govern the Cuban island and to protect American interests in the post-colonial era. A history of African Americans and U.S. empire, this paper draws connections across national borders, examining the revolution in Cuba and African American citizenship claims as concurrent and intersecting developments.
Drawing on pension files, military records, newspapers, and Cuban secondary sources, I use microhistorical techniques to demonstrate the multiple links between African Americans’ political activism and the War in Cuba. This paper will reveal a new dimension of the claims making that developed around the question of the privileges and responsibilities of citizenship.