Many Americans know the story of the United States Colored Troops, who broke racial barriers in Civil War combat, and of the buffalo soldiers, who served in the West after that conflict, but African Americans also served in segregated militia units in twenty-three states. This book tells the story of that experience in Kansas. In addition to black regulars, hundreds of other black militiamen and volunteers from Kansas provided military service from the Civil War until the dawn of the twentieth century. More than a military history, this account records the quest of black men, many of them former slaves, for inclusion in American society. Many came from the bottom of the socioeconomic order and found that as militiamen they could gain respect within their