Buffalo Soldier From Florida Dead At 99

Miami FL

03 January, 2022

2:28 PM

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A Miami Times Staff Report (SCF) Dec 31, 2021 Steve Lewis, a World War II veteran who was one of the last living members of an all-Black cavalry regiment, died last Wednesday in Florida. He was 99. Robert Powell, president of the NAACP chapter in Manatee County, Fla., said Lewis had been hospitalized prior to his death. "We lost a legend, a great guy," Powell said in a phone interview to The Associated Press. "I used to love listening to his stories." According to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Lewis first learned about America's entry into the war when he listened to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's famous radio address on Dec. 7, 1941. He was a senior at segregated Memorial High School in Palmetto, Fla., and enlisted to fight along with countless other ROTC students. After entering the U.S. Army in 1943, Lewis was initially assigned to the 9th Cavalry Regiment at Fort Clark, Texas, an all-Black unit that distinguished itself over decades of fighting. The unit had gained fame after the Civil War by patrolling the American frontier, and its members were known as "Buffalo Soldiers," although they were officially disbanded when President Harry S. Truman issued an order to integrate the armed forces in 1948. The horse cavalry training came as a shock to Lewis, who recently talked about his experience with the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. The Family Heritage House Museum at the State College of Florida in Sarasota memorialized the service of Steve Lewis with a bronze bust. (SCF) "I had never been near a horse," said Lewis. "They gave me a horse and I had to learn to ride a horse and I had to do everything a cavalryman did, ride the horse, feed the horse." With the mechanized firepower and tanks that the Germans deployed during the war, it became apparent that horsemen would not be needed. Lewis' unit was converted into a service unit to supply soldiers heading up to the front lines. He became a morning report clerk, keeping records of the soldiers and calling the roll every morning. He later traveled to Northern Africa, Italy and other parts of Europe with the unit, and is one of the few soldiers who trained under both iterations of the 9th Cavalry unit. After the war, the Florida native earned a degree in agriculture at Florida A&M University and taught for 30 years in the Palmetto area, where he was still a resident when he died. Lewis is survived by a daughter, according to the Bradenton Herald. The Miami Times is the largest Black-owned newspaper in the south serving Miami's Black community since 1923. The award-winning weekly is frequently recognized as the best Black newspaper in the country by the National Newspaper Publishers Association.