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A t-shirt worn by Beyoncé During a performance by Juneteenth on his “Cowboy Carter” tour, sparked a discussion on how the Americans supervise their history and caused a wave of criticism from the superstar born in Houston.
The t-shirt carried during a concert in Paris presented images of the soldiers of Buffalo, which belonged to units of the active black American army in the late 1800s and in the early 1900s. On the back, there was a long description of the soldiers who understood “their antagonists were the enemies of peace, order and colony: Bandits cattle, murderous armed men, counterfeits, intruders and Mexican revolutionaries. ”
Images of the shirt and performance videos are also presented on the Beyoncé website.
While she is preparing to return to the United States for performances in her hometown this weekend, Aboriginal fans and influencers went to social networks to criticize Beyoncé for having worn a shirt that supervises the American Amerindians and revolutionaries like anything except the victims of American imperialism and for the promotion of the anti-indigenous language.
A Beyoncé spokesperson did not respond to a request for comments.
Who were the soldiers of Buffalo?
The soldiers of Buffalo served in six military units created after the civil war in 1866. They were made up of soldiers formerly enslaved, free men and black civil war soldiers and fought in hundreds of conflicts – including in the Hispano -American war, the Second World War and the Second World War – until they were dissolved in 1951.
Like the quotation of Beyoncé’s shirt, they also fought many battles against Aboriginal peoples as part of the American army violence and land flight campaign during the expansion to the west of the country.
Some historians say that the nickname of “Buffalo soldiers” was granted by the tribes who admired the bravery and the tenacity of the combatants, but that could be more legend than in fact. “In the end, we really don’t have this kind of information,” Carter Carter, director of exhibitions at the Buffalo Soldiers Museum in Houston, told Buffalo.
Carter and other Museum staff have said that it was only in recent years, the museum has made wider efforts to include more complexities of the battles that Buffalo soldiers fought against the Amerindians and Mexican revolutionaries and the role they played in the subjugation of Aboriginal peoples. They, a bit like many other museums across the country, hope to add more nuances to the framing of American history and be more respectful of the ways they have Cause the indigenous communities.
“We romanianize the western border,” he said. “The first stories that spoke of Buffalo soldiers were affected by many of these factors. So you have really not seen a change in this story until recently.”
There has often been a lack of various voice discussing how the history of Buffalo soldiers is supervised, said Michelle Tovar, director of museum education. The current political climate has exerted enormous pressure on schools, including those in Texas, to avoid honest discussions on American history, she said.
“At the moment, in this area, we are declining many school districts in which we cannot go to teach this story,” said Tovar. “We are a museum where we can at least be a hub, where we can invite the community, no matter what the districts say, invite them to learn it and do what we can make awareness to continue to teach honest history.”
Historians examine the reason for restoration
Beyoncé’s recent album, “Act II: Cowboy Carter”, has played on a kind of American iconography, which many consider its way of overthrowing the contiguity of the country musical genre with whiteness and Recover the cowboy aesthetics for black Americans. Last year, she became the first black woman at the head of the Billboard country music board, and “Cowboy Carter” won her the first prize at the Grammy Awards 2025, Album of the year.
“Buffalo soldiers play this major role in the black property of the American West,” said Tad Stoermer, historian and professor at Johns Hopkins University. “In my opinion, (Beyoncé is) well aware of the role that these images play. This is the” Cowboy Carter “tour to cry out loud. The whole tour, the whole album, the whole play is located in this stratical story.”
But Stoermer also points out that Buffalo soldiers were supervised in American history in a way that also plays in the myths of American nationalism.
As the use by Beyoncé of Buffalo soldiers indicates, black Americans also use their history to claim the agency on their role in the creation of the country, said Alaina E. Roberts, historian, author and professor at the University of Pittsburgh who studies the intersection of black and Amerindian civil war in civil war.
“This is the category in which she perhaps thought she was entering this conversation, but the soldiers of Buffalo are even a step above this because they were literally involved not only in the colony of the West but in genocide in a sense,” she said.
Online reactions are built before Houston emissions
Several indigenous influencers, interpreters and academics went to social networks this week to criticize Beyoncé or denounce the language of the shirt as anti-indigenous. “Do you think Beyoncé will apologize (or recognize) the shirt?” Indigenous.tv, an Instagram account of native news and culture with more than 130,000 subscribers, asked Thursday in a position.
Many of its detractors, as well as fans, agree. A flood of publications on social networks called pop star for historical framing on the shirt.
“Buffalo soldiers are an interesting historic moment to look at. But we must be honest on what they have done, especially in their operations against Aboriginal Americans and Mexicans,” said Chisom Okorafor, who publishes on Tiktok under the @Confirmedsomaya handle.
Okorafor said that there was no “progressive” means of recovering the history of America from the construction of empires in the West, and that the use by Beyoncé of Western symbolism sends a problematic message: “These black people, too, can engage in American nationalism.”
“Blacks can also take advantage of the atrocities of (the American Empire,” she said. “It is a message that tells you to abandon immigrants, natives and people who live outside the United States. It is a message that tells you not only a virtue of being born in this country, but the more your line extends in this country, the more virtuous you are.”
