Sanders, Mingo

Impact on the world

Served as First Sergeant and senior enlisted soldier of the all-Black 25th Infantry Regiment Bicycle Corps, known as the 'Iron Riders,' who in 1897 completed a 41-day, nearly 2,000-mile bicycle expedition from Fort Missoula, Montana to St. Louis, Missouri, the longest endurance test of military bicycle transport attempted by the U.S. Army; the journey, covering rain, mud, sand, and mountain terrain on bicycles weighing nearly 80 pounds fully loaded, drew national newspaper coverage and proved the physical capability of Black soldiers in an era when the War Department openly questioned it.

Life & background

A career soldier with the all-Black 25th Infantry Regiment, one of six segregated regiments established after the Civil War and known as Buffalo Soldiers, Sanders served as the senior enlisted soldier and effectively second-in-command, beneath white Lieutenant James A. Moss, for the regiment's Bicycle Corps. After a successful 1896 round-trip test ride to Yellowstone National Park, Sanders helped lead 19 fellow Black soldiers on a much longer 1897 expedition from Fort Missoula to St. Louis, an undertaking covering nearly 2,000 miles of rain, mud, sand, and mountain terrain over 41 days, with each soldier's bicycle loaded with rifles, ammunition, tools, and camping equipment weighing close to 80 pounds. The expedition, covered extensively by national newspapers and a dedicated reporter who accompanied the unit, demonstrated the bicycle's viability for military transport and the soldiers' endurance and discipline at a time when the regiments were continuously required to prove themselves against the era's pervasive racial prejudice; though the Army ultimately abandoned the bicycle corps concept once automobiles emerged, the expedition remains a celebrated chapter of Buffalo Soldier history, commemorated with reenactment rides on its anniversaries.

Sources

1. Smithsonian Magazine (The Black Buffalo Soldiers Who Biked Across the American West); Missouri State Parks (Iron Riders); National Park Service; Task & Purpose