Tag: Immune regiments

(ca. 1835 – May 5, 1907)

from The Greenwood Project

W.L. Irvin’s name appeared frequently in post-Civil War newspapers. A barber by trade, he and other elite leaders posted letters to Gov. John C. Brown and Gen. W.B. Bate in 1874, urging them to take stronger action against lynching. Irvin was a board member of the House Building and Loan Association during the 1890s. He served in the U.S. Army for several years and later led the Langston Rifles, one of Nashville’s five “colored” military companies. During the Spanish American War (1898), he became a lieutenant in an “immune regiment” (military authorities erroneously believed African American troops were naturally immune to tropical diseases and sent many into combat in the tropics), serving until the regiment mustered out. An alternate delegate to the state Republican Convention in 1900, Irvin was active in the [Frederick] Douglass Club and was a featured speaker at their 1903 meeting. He was buried with honors by the Masonic Order, of which he was a longtime member.

All existing African American military units were called up for service in the Spanish American War. (Photo from the Library of Congress)

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The Greenwood Project is a series of 160-word biographies of individuals who lie at rest in Mt. Ararat and Greenwood cemeteries, two historic African American burial grounds in Nashville, Tennessee. The project, which began in September 2014 (and is still available on Facebook, at https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064806156276), shares the stories of more than 300 consequential individuals, primarily African American, who changed the course of city, state, and national history through their words and deeds. (All biographies were written by Kathy Lauder unless otherwise noted.)