Help Solve the Mystery of the Missing Soldiers

a. You're a detective trying to solve the mysterious disappearance of hundreds of African-American soldiers from Yosemite and Sequoia's history. Where do you start? Where do you look? Has a crime been committed? What do you expect to find?

b. Somewhere out there are the descendant's of those soldiers who served in Yosemite and Sequoia at the turn of the century. How do you find these people and connect their lives with this history? Why should you bother?

c. The African-American military history of the Sierra parks is only a small part of the overall participation of the U.S. Army, which is just a chapter in the story of Yosemite and Sequoia. If this is such a relatively insignificant incident, why should we care who these people were or what they did?

d. Some people would argue that paying so much attention to this history is making a mountain out of a mole hill, but what if very few people even see the mole hill? What if the perception exists that there was NO participation of African-Americans in any capacity during the formative years of Yosemite and Sequoia. What do you do then? How are issues of race, history, and wilderness connected?

e. I am one of only two African-American rangers in Yosemite. Does that mean that there are NO African-American rangers in Yosemite? Will people a hundred years from now no longer be able to see me? A small number of people do not equal zero, but what if history reduces those lives to zero? Who decides what we as people should remember and what we should forget? How would YOU feel if you lived and worked in a place and found out later on that people were saying that you were never there? How would it make you feel? Would you do something about it? What if you are dead? What options do you have to change the way people think about you?