Virginia Lane Frazier was one of the first Black US Army’s Women’s Corps (WAC) soldiers to enlist in Minnesota during World War II. She served with the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, a unit made up entirely of Black women that was stationed in England between February and November of 1945. The battalion won praise for clearing a backlog of mail that provided solace to American soldiers in combat.

William Little Wolf left his home on Minnesota’s White Earth Reservation as a child to attend a series of boarding schools. In 1917, he ran away from Carlisle Indian Industrial School in order to join the Navy and fight for the United States in World War I. He earned praise for his service as a gunner on the USS Utah and returned in 1919 to live out the rest of his life in Minnesota.

On November 6, 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt dishonorably discharged 167 African American infantrymen from their battalion at Fort Brown when they refused to confess to committing acts of violence in Brownsville, Texas, riot three months earlier. Dorsey Willis, the last surviving member of this battalion, lived in Minneapolis from 1913 until he died in 1977. In 1972, his dishonorable discharge was changed to an honorable one, and with the help of Senator Hubert Humphrey, he was allowed a pension of $25,000.