The Buffalo Soldier Monument

This monument honors the Buffalo Soldiers, the African American cavalry regiments who served on the western frontier after the Civil War. The Tenth Cavalry was organized right here at Fort Leavenworth in eighteen sixty-six, one of the first all-Black regiments in the regular army. The idea for the memorial came from General Colin Powell.

In the early nineteen eighties, while stationed here, Powell realized how little at the fort honored the Buffalo Soldiers. He decided that was not enough. In nineteen ninety-two, by then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the first African American to hold that post, Powell returned to dedicate this bronze figure of a mounted soldier above a waterfall, finally giving these men the lasting tribute he believed they had earned.