Today we honor Cathy Williams, the only known woman Buffalo Soldier. She served disguised as a man in the segregated Thirty-Eighth Infantry Regimen. She was born into slavery, and after being freed, she had to serve the US Army as a cook and laundress through battles and campaigns. After the Civil War, she enlisted with the Buffalo Soldiers as William Cathy and served for two years until her post surgeon discovered she was a woman.
The military offered this soldier the chance to “make my own living and not be dependent on relations or friends” and tales of Williams became popular. She was a trailblazer and quietly defied norms to find a better life, not knowing she was helping to pave the way for so many.
Irene W. Griffin, the first black woman to register to vote in Plaquemines Parish and the wife of the late Rev. Percy Murphy Griffin, who led the civil rights movement in the notoriously segregated community, died at 84
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