Have You Heard of Cathay Williams? The Woman Who Dared Become A Buffalo Soldier
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 soldier, that is one of the longest journeys in American history,” says storyteller George Pettigrew of ...
Source: kcur.org