(upbeat music) - Sema Hadithi African American Heritage and Culture Foundation is presenting the Buffalo Soldiers Heritage Trail Project.

And here with me today are Robert Burch and Ramesus Stewart-Johnson.

Hi gentlemen, welcome.

Let's start with you, Robert.

Why don't you first of all give us the background of buffalo soldiers?

- Okay, well, buffalo soldiers were created immediately after the Civil War.

The United States Army had quite a number of Black soldiers that they could take advantage of.

And so they created a number of infantries.

Eventually ended up being four infantries, excuse me, regiments of Black soldiers.

We had the 24th Infantry, excuse me, the 24th Infantry, yes, at Fort Douglas and the Ninth Calvary at Fort Duchesne.

And they accounted for about 20% to 25% of all the buffalo soldiers that served here at some point in Utah.

- Wow.

And I think a lot of people don't know that history.

So thank you.

And I know now you're starting the Buffalo Heritage Trail.

So I'm gonna ask Ramesus, who's over that project to tell us about that project.

- So the project will officially launch June 2025, so next summer.

The beautiful part about it is is it's gonna start around Helper, Price and it's gonna come up through Nine Mile Canyon, stopping in Fort Duchesne, in between Vernal and Roosevelt, where we will visit Fort Duchesne and talk about the impact of the Ninth Calvary there and then it'll work its way up here to Salt Lake, to Fort Douglas, which is on the University of Utah's campus.

- Right, right.

I know.

And part of what you wanna do too is establish relations, I know, with the Ute tribe.

- That is correct.

One of the things that when you begin to research the dynamics of the buffalo soldiers being here in Utah is they were the police for the settlers.

And so that in itself creates conflict.

- And you're gonna fix it all.

(Robert laughing) All right, thank you so much for being here and sharing that important part of Utah history.

Thanks.

- Thank you.

- And if you'd like to know more about the Buffalo Trail Heritage Project, it's part of the Sema Hadithi African American Heritage and Culture Foundation.

The grand opening will be June 2025.

But to find out all about it and the interesting history, go to semahadithi.org.

That's semahadithi.org.

I'm Mary Dickson.

(upbeat music) Thanks for watching "Contact."

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