Award of the Medal of Honor
- When
- June 1899
- Where
- Santiago de Cuba
Four Buffalo Soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor in June 1899 for rescuing a stranded landing party under fire during the Spanish–American War.
In June 1899, four of the five rescuers, Private William H. Thompkins, Dennis Bell, Fitz Lee, and George H. Wanton, were awarded the Medal of Honor. These men, all members of the Buffalo Soldiers, became the last African-Americans to be selected for the Medal of Honor for more than half a century. The rescue occurred during the Battle of Tayacoba, an American special operations effort of June 30, 1898, to land supplies and reinforcements to Cuban rebels.
Sources
- Battle of Tayacoba Wikipedia, revision of 2026-08-22
- Buffalo Soldier Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-13
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.