Oregon Black Pioneers has news of a free showing of the documentary, Buffalo Soldiers: Fighting on Two Fronts.
They say:
Presented by The Conversation Project at Willamette University, “Buffalo Soldiers: Fighting on Two Fronts” is screening free on Thursday, February 9th at 7:00 PM in Smullin Film Studies Theatre (Room 122) in Ford Hall. Following the screening, director Dru Holley will be joined by Oregon Black Pioneers’ Zachary Stocks to discuss Buffalo Soldiers and answer questions from the audience.
Clearly the focus will be on civil rights and a longer scope, but there is another, narrower part of the history to remember!
The 25th Infantry formed a bicycle corps in the late 1890s.
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| (Frank Jay Haynes, Northern Rockies Heritage Center The link from 2010 is now dead) |
Since we last mentioned this over a decade ago, there's so much more out there on the corps!
- At Missouri State Parks, "Iron Riders: The Story of the 25th Infantry Regiment Bicycle Corps"
- At National Archives, "Iron Riders – The 25th Infantry Regiment Bicycle Corps, Part I"
- At the Army Times on what was for a moment leading edge ground transport
technology, "How the Army tried and failed to build a bicycle corps." (It suffers from some autoist triumphalism, however. They write, "Despite the 25th Infantry Bicycle Corps proving that the pennyfarthing
could move troops twice as fast as horses in 1897, it was only be a few
short years before the automobile would disrupt the way battles were
fought on all fronts, forever changing the face of warfare." They are right about cars and tank warfare, but as you can see from the photo, the 25th Infantry members were on safety bicycles, not pennyfarthings. They romance the story a little patronizingly.)
- At the academic press site, JSTOR Daily, "Buffalo Soldiers and the Bicycle Corps"
- At the Smithsonian, "The Black Buffalo Soldiers Who Biked Across the American West"
- And at the Historical Museum at Fort Missoula, "25th Infantry Bicycle Corps"
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| Wednesday, February 8th |
Tomorrow, Wednesday the 8th, is the local "Winter Walk and Roll to School Day."
One of the projects they've been working on is a comprehensive set of maps of sidewalks and crosswalks for each school.
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| Summary sheet on the mapping |
The maps are compiled here. There are 31 of them at the moment. They focus on infrastructure, on the existence of sidewalks and crosswalks, and not so much on the subjective texture or quality of the walk. Some of the routes seem a little dubious. In some neighborhoods, quiet streets without sidewalks might be preferable to busier streets with sidewalks. As more parents and kids use them, I am sure the maps will be refined in successive iterations. Especially if you have kids and have not discovered the maps, check them out.
And for all the Salem-Keizer Safe Routes information and activity, see their site.
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