Six other black defectors and a bandleader mattered

Cpl. David Fagen, 24th Infantry, US Army, gained fame defecting to the Katipunan's 1899 Insurrection. The African American wasn’t alone. Thirty other members of the "black regiments" broke ranks. They got fed up with their racist white generals and found common cause with the browns. (Fifteen white soldiers also deserted for varied reasons.)

The black defectors aided the Philippine resistance to American colonizers. Their story needs to be retold, as they helped shape Filipinos' destiny. So, this sequel to my piece last Wednesday:

Having deserted and fought with the resistance, the defectors fared badly when caught. Aside from Corporal Fagen, lawyer-historian Gill H. Boehringer recounts six blacks from the 9th Cavalry: "Lewis Russell and Edmond Du Bose were executed before a crowd of 3,000 in Albay. Of some 20 sentenced to death for desertion, only these two black privates were executed. All others, including about 15 whites, had their sentences commuted by President Theodore Roosevelt. Three other black soldiers were sent to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to serve life terms: John Dalrymple, Garth Shores, and William Victor. The last of those ‘magnificent seven’, Fred Hunter, was ‘killed while escaping custody’.”

Writing in war-torn Luzon for the New York Herald, Pulitzer awardee Stephen Bonsal observed then: “The desertions from the Negro regiments were large — much larger than from the white organizations — and were invariably of a different character. The white man deserted because he was lazy and idle and found service life irksome. Sometimes he joined the insurgents; but he did so evidently because that was the only way in which he could obtain his dream of becoming a wild man in the woods. But the Negroes deserted in scores and for the purpose of joining the insurgents, and many of them, like the celebrated Fagen, became leaders and fought the white troops or their former comrades with zest and ability.”

Bonsal, later adviser to President Woodrow Wilson, cited three inducers of African American defections: lynching of blacks back home, abusive white officers, and empathy for Filipinos as “racial brothers”. For them President William McKinley’s “Manifest Destiny” rang hollow. The latter had claimed about why America was invading the newborn Philippine Republic: “I went down on my knees and prayed to Almighty for light and guidance... and one night late it came to me this way. We could not leave (Filipinos) to themselves — they are unfit for self-government — and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain’s was... There was nothing left for us to do but take them all and educate them, and uplift and Christianize them.”

Yet what followed, as the black soldiers eyewitnessed, was the brutal subjugation of a race that had just won freedom from Spain. And the Filipinos had schools and churches. Those people's rights they were ordered to ignore. The Philadelphia Ledger reported then: “Our (troops) ... exterminate men, women, children, prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected people from lads of 10 up... Our soldiers have pumped salt water into men to ‘make them talk,’ and have taken prisoners people who held up their hands and peacefully surrendered, and an hour later ... stood them on a bridge and shot them down one by one, to drop into the water below and float down, as examples to those who found their bullet-loaded corpses.”

The 24th Infantry’s sergeant major John W. Galloway couldn’t take it. An “immoral war”, he called it in a letter to Katipunero Tomas Consunji, writes George Lipsitz in "The Possessive Investment in Whiteness". Authorities raided the latter’s house and found the letter. Galloway was busted down to private, then dishonorably discharged. His pension was withheld to serve as example to other unsolicited commenters, Prof. Boehringer says.

The war ended with Filipino defeat in 1902. At least 500 members of the “black regiments” and other units chose to stay behind. One of them, the chief musician-sergeant of the 48th Infantry, was recruited to form the Philippine Constabulary band.

Walter H. Loving rose from lieutenant to colonel as fast as the band earned laurels. (The "savages" whom McKinley belittled had great musical passion and skill.) In 1904 Loving brought them to the St. Louis World Fair where they wowed the crowd with classical and martial music. Doubling as a symphony orchestra, they toured other US cities and became a hit, writes Claiborne Richardson in "The Black Perspective in Music". The son of former slaves from Virginia, Loving was an accomplished player and composer, adds Jose D. Fermin in "1904 World’s Fair". President Fidel Ramos awarded Loving posthumously in 1993 for writing the battle hymn, "My Beloved Philippines".

Loving retired twice from the PC, first at age 44 in 1916 to marry his fiancée in California. President Manuel Quezon convinced him to return to band leading. He bade farewell again in 1923 but stayed in Manila, where the Second World War caught up with him. Loving and wife were jailed by the Japanese at the University of Santo Tomas, and beheaded along with other ailing American soldiers during the Battle for Manila.

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