Cathay William News Today

A formerly enslaved woman secretly became a Buffalo Soldier and was able to hide her gender from her fellow infantrymen for years.

Cathay Williams was captured as "contraband" by the Union Army. After following them in camp, she decided to enlist.

KCUR 89.3 In 1866 Cathay Williams, a newly freed Black woman from Independence, Missouri, made a historic decision. She switched her name to William Cathay, disguising herself as a man so she could become a legendary Buffalo Soldier. Cathay Williams was a trailblazer, who confronted racial and gender discrimination during the Reconstruction Era, the era after the Civil War when social inequities were being readdressed across the United States. “If a woman is a slave and goes to being a soldie...