African-American Soldiers at Camp Claiborne

Black soldiers trained at Camp Claiborne in a segregated Army. The 91st and 93rd Engineer General Service Regiments, mostly African American, built the railroad between Camps Claiborne and Polk; the 91st later served in the Pacific and the 93rd on the Alaska-Canadian Highway. The 761st Tank Battalion, activated here, went on to liberate more than 30 towns in 183 days of combat and earn 11 Silver Stars. Staff Sergeant Ruben Rivers received a posthumous Medal of Honor in 1997. The Garrison Command kept the base itself running.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Epps House: Solomon Northup's Gateway to Freedom — 9.7 mi
  The Creole cottage Solomon Northup helped build for the man who enslaved him, moved twice and now a small museum on the LSU Alexandria campus.
• Valentine Lake Recreation Area — 15 mi
  A 46-acre Kisatchie National Forest lake dug by Civilian Conservation Corps crews in the 1930s, with a campground and the head of the Wild Azalea Trail.
• Kent Plantation House — 16 mi
  Rapides Parish's oldest known standing building, a Creole house with a February tour and a 2023 memorial that put the enslaved first.
• Arna Bontemps African American Museum — 17 mi
  The restored Alexandria house where the Harlem Renaissance writer Arna Bontemps was born in 1902, on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.

More markers nearby

• Training At Camp Claiborne / Life At Camp Claiborne — steps away
• Camp Claiborne, LA — steps away
• Camp Claiborne — steps away
• Camp Claiborne (Birthplace of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions) — 0.8 mi