“Our Oath of Allegiance Knows Neither Race, Color Nor Nation”: Race and Empire in the Philippine-American War

In the last fifteen years, historians have revealed the critical role of racial ideologies in guiding American projects of empire. Yet, we still know relatively little about the racialized experiences of those African Americans who were often charged with the day-to-day tasks of building and maintaining this empire abroad. This presentation examines the complex racial dynamics present in the Philippines after the Spanish-American War as African American soldiers were assigned to instate racial hierarchies in the Philippines that mirrored the Jim Crow they faced at home. It argues that the resulting racial tensions undermined U.S. efforts to create and control their overseas territory. African Americans were not alone in noting the inconsistency of subjecting Filipinos to a racial system much like Jim Crow. Filipino leaders also noted the similarities, and skillfully manipulated these tensions as they encouraged African American soldiers to desert and fight against U.S. colonizers. Furthermore, such tension had large-scale impacts on strategists in Washington by 1900 that the United States Philippine Commission suggested eliminating the use of African American soldiers in the Philippines to prevent potential desertions or problems with instituting Jim Crow. In doing so, this examination of race and colonization among cultural mediators within the Philippine-American War will provide a new layer of complexity to African American participation in U.S. empire building at the turn of the twentieth century.