Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, The New York Public Library. "The 369th Infantry Regiment, also known as the Harlem Hellfighters, a well-known New York based Black regiment during World War I, returning home" New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed November 8, 2024.

Veterans Day comes around once a year, and frankly, it often slips by without the full attention it deserves. For those of us who may not have a military background, or a family member who has served, Veterans Day can easily be written off as another federal holiday, or as headlines show, a day for veterans and their loved ones to snag free meals and discounts around town. But as the country and the world continue to process this week’s election results, we’re taking a moment to revisit our archives, and honor veterans, specifically veterans of color, with stories of life after service. We’ve compiled a short list of reads from URL Media partners Black Voice News, Native News Online and Epicenter NYC, as a way to connect deeper with this often overlooked group.

Who were the Buffalo Soldiers? 

In the weeks leading up to Veterans Day last fall, Black Voice News photojournalist Aryana Norozzi visited an exhibition on Buffalo Soldiers at the California African American Museum, where she met Donna Jackson Houston. A year before, Houston had discovered that her grandfather was a Buffalo Soldier and wanted to preserve his legacy. Through The Nogales Buffalo Soldiers Legacy Association, Houston hopes to raise awareness of the legacy of segregated troops in America, connect with other descendants and advocate for including this chapter of Black history in local school curricula. 

“It is vital to know one’s history and to share our stories,” she told Black Voice News. 

The Buffalo Soldiers were all Black regiments mainly led by white U.S. Army officers, who served in various wars, including the Red River War (1874-1875) and the Battle of San Juan Hill during the Spanish American War (1898). Buffalo Soldiers helped protect the nation’s westward expansion by building roads, and served as some of the nation’s first park rangers.    

“One thing led to another and I started asking in my own family, ‘hey, do we have any Buffalo Soldiers?’ And yeah, our great uncle Cornelius was a Buffalo Soldier,” another descendant, Forescee Hogan-Rowles, told Black Voice News. “He helped found [the historically Black college] Lincoln University. He was one of the Blacks that actually got a land grant from the federal government in 1865.”

Legend has it that the “Buffalo Soldiers” moniker was coined by Native Americans, either because the Black soldiers’ dark curly hair resembled a buffalo mane or because the soldiers fought like the fierce Great Plains buffalo.

Hear from more descendants of Buffalo Soldiers in this 2023 Veterans Day story from Black Voice News and how you can get involved with The Nogales Buffalo Soldiers Legacy Association. 

Riverside County, California turns green in honor of veterans

Also from Black Voice News is another Veterans Day story, this time featuring Daniel Martinez, a former U.S. Navy Reserve servicemember. The outlet caught up with him last year at Riverside County’s Operation Green Light for Veterans ceremonial light-switch event.

Martinez shared that one of his most memorable experiences was turning 18 at sea during the world’s fourth-largest typhoon. Having enlisted at 16, he went on to serve in the Vietnam War and Operation Desert Shield in 1991.

While his service took him across Asia, it has also come with life-long consequences. 

Martinez told Black Voice News that he once attempted suicide and has sought treatment for PTSD and lung disease due to his exposure to *Agent Orange. 

“My message to other veterans is that if you need help, there’s help here,” he said. “When I was out of Vietnam, there was no help. The only help we got was a hospital jail or suicide. Now you got all these organizations out here, just saying, ‘Come, we’ll take care of you. Just get here and we’ll do the rest.’”

*Agent Orange is a chemical herbicide that was widely used during the Vietnam War. It was sprayed as a defoliant to destroy vegetation and disrupt the food supply of Vietnamese troops. If you or someone you know has a health condition caused by Agent Orange exposure, you may be eligible for disability compensation. 

One New York veteran finds his happy place among horses

For Jaipaul Singh, a veteran and Queens resident, therapeutic horseback riding helped his anxiety: “to learn to trust something else and not depend on yourself was a big, big obstacle.”

“You have to let go to be one with the horse, to trust the horse,” Singh said.

Read more from Epicenter NYC.

Mesothelioma and Native Americans

From PTSD to military sexual trauma and traumatic brain injury, veterans face a host of health challenges post deployment. One disease we don’t often hear about is mesothelioma, a very rare and aggressive form of cancer that involves tumors growing in the mesothelium. Despite its rarity, veterans make up a third of diagnosed cases. 

As Native American communities continue to contend with poorer health outcomes and exposure to environmental hazards, including illegal disposal of asbestos onto tribal land (known as fly-tipping), Native Americans could benefit from a National Mesothelioma Registry, writes Jonathan Sharp for Native News Online. This registry could help identify factors that increase this group’s vulnerability to the disease, and improve diagnosis, healthcare and treatment of it. 

Lastly, ever wondered why the U.S. military loves recruiting Latinos? Explore the reasons in this pre-Veterans Day reel from URL Media partner Pulso. 

Ariam Alula (how to say it) is URL Media’s first audience manager. She works closely with URL Media’s Editorial Director and leads the network’s social and newsletter content while further developing and executing the brand’s strategic audience goals. Alula who was born and raised in The Bronx had this to say about her work upon joining the network in the fall of 2022.

“I'm committed to helping our audience understand how issues in their own backyard impact other BIPOC communities. Also, I believe that our network's content amplification and original reporting should fully reflect and affirm the customs and cultural norms of our multicultural, multidisciplinary, and geographically diverse audiences. As BIPOC communities have and continue to be grossly misrepresented by the mainstream media, this part of the work can’t be overstated. Also growing up as a child of immigrants, community is an integral part of my identity, and it's something I bring to URL Media every day.”

Before joining the network, Alula sharpened her range of skills and interests in newsletter curation and editing, audience strategy and research, and measuring and tracking impact. In recent years Alula has worked for many organizations in the journalism support space, such as Coda Story while based in the Republic of Georgia and U.S.-based organizations like the Institute for Nonprofit News, the Public Square Team at Democracy Fund, Online News Association and Women Do News. She has also written for the American Press Institute’s Need to Know newsletter.

Alula is also a proud graduate of the engagement journalism program at the Craig Newmark Journalism School at the City University of New York, where she spent 16 long, insightful and experimental months working with family caregivers of people with autism in New York City.