Enslavement to Enlistment: Refiguring Opportunity for African Americans in the Military

Abstract

ABSTRACT What does “opportunity” look like for African Americans in the United States military? While the military has been viewed as a vehicle for protecting freedom, it has done so in conditions of racial capitalism and settler colonialism. Through these analytical lenses, opportunity is generally idealized as property, but we propose that Black individuals associated with the military may have seen opportunity as relationality through land and place. We discuss Black constructions of opportunity at the military site of Fort Snelling in Minnesota during the nineteenth century, from enslaved individuals to enlisted Black Regulars garrisoned in the 1880s. Changing expectations of labor and social landscape shaped these opportunities, configured within structures of racism which were themselves adapting to the efforts of African Americans to seek opportunity. We offer archaeological materials and historical documents for potential use in public interpretation that attends to both oppression and creative pursuits of opportunity.