A group of Arizona residents and visitors from other locations are encouraging the general public to learn more about the history of African American service members who enlisted in the segregated military from the 1860s to the 1950s.
Buffalo Soldiers were stationed in multiple camps west of the Mississippi River during the westward expansion of the United States.
Donna Jackson-Houston began learning more about their history several years ago while conducting research about her own grandfather, who had been in the military.
“The Buffalo Soldiers were the all-black, segregated regiments in the United States Army, and when you say segregated, it was not always easy for them, and that is another reason why I believe that my family did not know that my grandfather was a Buffalo Soldier. One is that they did not refer to themselves as Buffalo Soldiers. It was cavalry or infantry, but their life being segregated, sometimes it just wasn’t easy,” Jackson-Houston says.
She discovered that Sergeant Lucius Franklin Monroe Jackson was one of several Buffalo Soldiers who stayed in Nogales, married local women, and contributed to the development of their communities.
A few years ago, she founded The Nogales Buffalo Soldiers Legacy Association, with the goal of honoring these veterans and spreading information about their lives.
Tucson resident Michelle Biggs Benzenhoefer also has African American and Mexican ancestry. She was adopted and raised by her grandparents, Buffalo Soldier Master Sergeant Levi Biggs, Sr. and his wife, Maria Dolores Rivas.
“We are all chitlins and rice and a little bit of beans, frijoles, mixed in,” says Biggs Benzenhoefer with smile.
However, passing along this history is a serious endeavor, she adds.
“In knowing that so few people really know the history of Buffalo Soldiers, of the segregated troops as a whole, but the Buffalo soldiers in particular, I thought it was really important to carry that tradition on, to carry their memory on to those generations that are coming. We’re losing libraries of information,” she says.
“So it’s incumbent upon our generations and those behind us to spread that word about the valor, about the strength, about the courage and the dedication that these men showed to a country that didn’t always reciprocate that respect.”
Charles Hancock is the vice-president of the Southwest Association of Buffalo Soldiers and joined dozens of other people at the 2026 Nogales Buffalo Soldiers annual salute.
This year it also commemorates the160th anniversary of the formation of the United States Buffalo Soldier regiments.
“We know that the Buffalo Soldiers of the 10th Cavalry, of course, they were stationed here at Fort Huachuca. They were stationed here at Camp Little. They were also stationed at Camp NACO. So we have that triangle, if you will, of all three of those installations. And we work closely with the Camp NACO Association as well as Donna Jackson-Houston here, and Camp Nogales,” Hancock says.
Donna Jackson-Houston is optimistic about disseminating this binational information. She’s grateful for the City of Nogales, Arizona’s assistance, and she has also started to meet with Mexican officials south of the border who are taking an interest in this cross-border chapter of their history.
Sitting close to her grandfather’s grave at the cemetery in Nogales, Donna Jackson-Houston gets emotional.
“It is with such honor and pride that just right there is my grandfather, Lucius Franklin Monroe Jackson, 25th Infantry. His place is right there, and my grandmother Angela Perez, right there together,” she adds.
“And I would like to think that they would be very proud that we are telling their story.”
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