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Lieutenant Colonel Allen
Allensworth |
When Lieutenant Colonel Allen Allensworth retired from the army
in 1906, he was the highest ranking black officer in American
history.
Born into slavery in Kentucky
in1842, Allen Allensworth gained his freedom in the Civil War when the
Forty-fourth Illinois Volunteer Infantry was camped in Louisville,
Kentucky. Young Allensworth dressed in an old uniform, plastered mud
over his face and marched boldly up Main street with the Union soldiers.
After escaping he served as a civilian nursing aide with the
Forty-fourth Illinois. He later served a two year enlistment in the U.S.
Navy and was Captain’s steward and clerk on the civil war gunboat U.S.S.
Tawah when it was destroyed in an engagement with Confederate batteries
at Johnsonville, Tennessee.
After being honorably discharged from the Navy,
Allensworth operated two restaurants with his brother William, taught in
Freedman’s Bureau schools in Kentucky, was ordained as a minister, and
served as Kentucky’s only black delegate to the Republican National
conventions of 1880 and 1884. After a two-year campaign in which he
solicited the support of Congressmen John R. Lynch of Mississippi and
Senator Joseph E. Brown of Georgia, President Grover Cleveland signed
his appointment as Chaplain of the 24th Infantry Regiment. While
serving at Fort Bayard, New Mexico Territory, Allensworth wrote Outline
of Course of Study, and the Rules Governing Post Schools of Ft. Bayard,
N.M. which became the standard army manual on the education of enlisted
personnel.
On April 7, 1906, after twenty years of service, he was
promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel making him the first black
officer to receive this rank. In 1908 retired Chaplain Allensworth and
four other black men formed the all-black town of Allensworth,
California. Six years later, in 1914, Allensworth was crossing a Los
Angeles street when he was killed by a motorcycle.
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