2nd Cavalry Division at Fort Clark
Brackettville, Kinney County, Texas
Marker Inscription
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)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Activated at Fort Clark in February 1943, the 2nd Cavalry Division brought together the legendary 9th and 10th Buffalo Soldier regiments with newer Black cavalry units, making it the U.S. Army's only all-Black cavalry division. More than 5,000 horses trained here alongside M3 Stuart tanks, even featuring in a wartime newsreel, as troopers endured hard drills and the racial injustices of a segregated army. Deemed unnecessary by the War Department, the division was dismounted, shipped to North Africa, and inactivated in March 1944.
Why it matters
It marks the last chapter of the horse cavalry and the service of Black soldiers who fought for a country that still denied them equality, a story central to World War II and the road to integration.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The idea for the 2nd Cavalry Division was born out of hard experience. Having absorbed the lessons of World War I, the Army organized its 1st and 2nd Cavalry Divisions in 1921 — though the 2nd would sit on paper for two decades, not activated until 1941 at Fort Riley, Kansas, as a new world war loomed.
The early 1940s were a moment of transformation for the American military, and cavalry sat right at the hinge of it. The horse, which had carried soldiers into battle for thousands of years, was giving way to the tank and the truck. An outfit like this one lived on that dividing line, and its short, complicated history reflects an Army trying to figure out what to do with a proud tradition that mechanized warfare was rendering obsolete.
It was also an Army rigidly segregated by race, even as it prepared to fight a war framed around freedom. That contradiction runs straight through the story of the units that trained here at Fort Clark, in the brush country of Kinney County near Brackettville.
People & events
When the division first formed, it briefly became something notable in its own right. Among its units were the 9th and 10th Cavalry regiments — the celebrated Buffalo Soldiers of the Indian Wars era — serving alongside two white regiments, the 2nd and 14th, which made it the Army's first integrated division. That arrangement did not last; the War Department inactivated the division in 1942 to move its personnel into armored regiments.
In November 1942 the Army ordered it rebuilt, this time assigning two new Black regiments, the 27th and 28th Cavalry, and splitting the division between Fort Clark, Texas, and Camp Lockett, California. It activated on February 25, 1943, with its headquarters here at Fort Clark under a native Texan, Major General Harry H. Johnson.
What unfolded on this ground was a scene from the very edge of two eras. More than 5,000 horses trained alongside M3 Stuart light tanks, old cavalry and new armor sharing the same dusty maneuvers — a spectacle striking enough that 20th Century Fox captured it in a Movietone newsreel in June 1943. The troopers endured grueling training and, at the same time, the daily indignities of a segregated Army. Then the decision came from above: the War Department concluded it did not need a second cavalry division. In January 1944 the men were dismounted and shipped east, arriving at Oran in North Africa on March 9, 1944. The next day, the division was inactivated. Fort Clark was closed behind them, and the roughly 1,500 buildings that had housed the division were later torn down.
Its place in the American story
The 2nd Cavalry Division holds a distinction no other formation can claim: it remains the only all-Black cavalry division in U.S. Army history, and the largest mounted force ever to serve in Texas. Its brief life closes out a long chapter — the age of the horse soldier — while the tanks that trained beside those horses point straight toward the mechanized wars to come.
But the deeper significance lies in the men themselves. They trained hard for a country that still denied them equal treatment, wearing the uniform of a nation that had not yet extended to them the full rights it was sending them to defend. That painful contradiction — Black Americans serving loyally within a segregated military — is one of the central threads of the World War II home front, and it sharpened the demands for change that followed.
The experience of Black troops in the war years helped build the case that would lead, in 1948, to the order desegregating the armed forces. Seen in that light, the frustrations these soldiers endured at Fort Clark were not just personal hardships but part of the long road toward integration. The division also carries forward the legacy of the Buffalo Soldiers, whose famous regiments were folded into its ranks, linking the frontier cavalry of the nineteenth century to the mechanized Army of the twentieth.
If you visit
Come to this site prepared to picture what is no longer here. The vast camp that once held the 2nd Cavalry Division is gone — its roughly 1,500 buildings were razed after the war — so the marker is doing the work of memory on ground that has largely returned to the quiet of the Texas brush country.
Stand a moment and imagine the sheer scale of it: more than 5,000 horses on these grounds, wheeling alongside light tanks, the last great mounted formation the state would ever see. That the whole spectacle was filmed for a newsreel tells you how extraordinary it looked even to people at the time — the old Army and the new one sharing a single field.
This is a stop for travelers who want the fuller, more honest story of World War II — one that includes the Black soldiers who trained here under a native-Texan general, served with pride, and faced injustice at home even as they prepared to serve abroad. Read the marker with that doubleness in mind, and the empty, windswept feel of the place becomes part of what it has to say.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Harry H. Johnson
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
New Cavalry Barracks
Brackettville, TX
When Fort Clark's aging 1870s cavalry barracks crumbled, the Army built three modern stone replacements in 1931–1932, and this fourth barracks rose on ground left vacant since the post commissary burned in 1892. Its state-of-the-art bays, mess hall, and offices were showcased to justify keeping Fort Clark as a permanent post. Over the next decade it quartered the 5th U.S. Cavalry, the Texas National Guard, the Buffalo Soldiers of the African-American 9th Cavalry, and, during World War II, 182 African-American women of the Women's Army Corps.
Army Service Club
Brackettville, TX
Standing on the site of Fort Clark's first guardhouse, this 1938 frame building served as the post's Army Service Club — a recreation center for soldiers and, during World War II mobilization, a non-commissioned officers' club — until the Army closed the fort in 1944. Set on a limestone webwall foundation, its banks of casement windows and louvered vents were built to catch the South Texas breeze. In later years it lived on as a country club and community center.
Fort Clark
Brackettville, TX
Established in 1852 beside the springs of Las Moras Creek, Fort Clark guarded the military road from San Antonio to El Paso and the border with Mexico. Nearly every U.S. cavalry regiment passed through, and its garrison — including the Seminole-Negro Indian Scouts and the Buffalo Soldiers of the 10th Cavalry and 24th and 25th Infantry — played a decisive part in the Indian campaigns of the 1870s. Held briefly by Confederates during the Civil War, the fort remained a horse-cavalry post until 1946.
Palisado Kitchen/Mess Room
Brackettville, TX
African American "Buffalo Soldiers" of the 25th Infantry built this vertical-post structure in 1869-70 as a mess room behind their stone barracks, using upright timbers because no trees stood tall enough for traditional log walls. Over the years it also served as storeroom, tailor shop, and amusement hall. A persistent legend wrongly tied it to Robert E. Lee, who never visited Fort Clark during his Texas service.