2nd Cavalry Division at Fort Clark

The division never fought as cavalry. It was mobilized for North Africa on January 12, 1944, and after it reached Oran its regiments were broken up and turned into service and engineer units: the 10th Cavalry became an engineer construction battalion, the 28th a quartermaster battalion and the 27th a port battalion, while the 9th's troopers were scattered among service units. Its men built airfields for the Tuskegee Airmen, did garrison and supply work, and sent replacements to the 92nd Infantry Division fighting in Italy. Major General Harry H. Johnson's command ended on May 10, 1944.

What the plaque says

2nd Cavalry Division at Fort Clark In response to the U.S. experience during World War I, the army organized the 1st and 2nd Cavalry Divisions in 1921. However, the 2nd Cavalry Division was not activated until 1941 at Fort Riley, Kansas. Among the units assigned were the 9th and 10th Cavalry regiments, the famed Buffalo Soldier units of the Indian Wars era, and two White cavalry regiments, the 2nd and 14th, thus constituting the army's first integrated division. The War Department inactivated the division in 1942 to transfer personnel to armored regiments. In November 1942, the War Department directed reactivation of the 2nd Cavalry Division, assigning two new Black regiments, the 27th and the 28th Cavalry. It was also announced the division would be divided between Fort Clark, Texas and Camp Lockett, California. The division activated on February 25, 1943 with headquarters at Fort Clark; command of the division was given to a native Texan, Major General Harry H. Johnson. Here on Fort Clark, over 5,000 horses trained alongside M3 Stuart Light Tanks and both were featured in a June 1943 20th Century Fox Movietone newsreel. Troopers endured hard training and the racial injustices of the times. The War Department determined that there was no need for a second cavalry division and planned to again inactivate it. During January 1944, the 2nd Cavalry Division was dismounted and shipped back east for deployment abroad, arriving at Oran, North Africa, on March 9, 1944; the division was inactivated the next day. Fort Clark was closed after the last soldiers stationed here were deployed, and the approximately 1,500 buildings which housed the 2nd Cavalry Division were later razed. Although the 2nd Cavalry Division's service was short lived, it remains the only all-Black cavalry division in U.S. Army history and the largest mounted formation ever to serve in Texas. (2009)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Clark and the Old Guardhouse Museum — steps away
  The 1852 post at Las Moras Springs, home from 1872 to 1914 of the Black Seminole scouts, now a gated resort with its old guardhouse open as a museum on weekends.
• Kickapoo Cavern State Park — 21 mi
  A lightly developed former ranch on the Kinney-Edwards line with twenty caves, a Saturday tour into a 1,400-foot cavern and a summer bat flight from Stuart Bat Cave.

More markers nearby

• Fort Clark — steps away
• Military Roads in Texas — 0.2 mi
• Fort Clark, U.S.A. — 0.4 mi
• Carver School Grounds — 0.4 mi