The story of The African American Twenty-fifth Infantry Bicycle Corps stationed in Montana who tested the bicycle for military use in the 1890s

Alexandra V. Koelle, a postdoctoral scholar at the Bill Lane Center for the American West, has won the 2011 Oscar O. Winther Award from the Western History Association for the best article published in the Western Historical Quarterly in the past year. Her article, "Pedaling on the Periphery: The African American Twenty-fifth Infantry Bicycle Corps and the Roads of American Expansion," tells the story of a corps of African American soldiers stationed in Montana who tested the bicycle for military use in the 1890s.

The soldiers' lieutenant, a white southerner, believed that the bicycle might be a viable replacement for the horse--after all, he reasoned, bicycles did not need food or rest. After several training rides, 20 volunteers from the Twenty-fifth Infantry Division biked a grueling 1,900 miles from Montana to St. Louis.

Koelle studied the black bicycle corps in her dissertation, which she is working on revising as a book during her postdoctoral fellowship at the Center. Her research provides a unique insight into the history of race relations in the American West, illustrating both similarities to and differences from the East.

Koelle's award-winning article examines the ways that immgrant and settler whites, Indians, and African Americans along the route responded to the bicycle corps. As Koelle explains, the black cyclists experienced a range of reactions throughout their journey. At some towns, white residents greeted them as American patriots, feting the group with bands and parades. In other places, they were met with suspicion—a western Missouri farmer warned the group that “you can pile right off a this land.”

In general, though, Koelle’s research reveals that the black soldiers became gradually less popular as they traveled farther East. In the West, racism against Native Americans may have mitigated racism against the African American soldiers. Several regiments of the Twenty-fifth had fought alongside whites at Wounded Knee, and they continued to be used against Native Americans throughout the 1890s. But “the farther east they went,” says Koelle, “the stricter the segregation, the longer the history of slavery, and the further the memory of Indian Wars.” TEXT and IMAGE CREDIT: The Bill Lane Center for the American West Jerry Yang & Akiko Yamazaki Environment & Energy Building 473 Via Ortega, Third Floor Stanford University Stanford, CA 94305-4225