Labor History Commons^™

Buffalo Soldier, Deserter, Criminal: The Remarkably Complicated Life Of Charles Ringo, Cicero Fain

History Faculty Research

This case study chronicles the remarkably complicated life of Charles Ringo who served nearly two enlistments as a Buffalo Soldier before deserting and embarking on a life of petty crime. It details his military service, his nomadic occupational life, his marriage, his acquittal of two sets of murders--one of his stepsons in West Virginia, the other of a white married couple in Illinois, and the assistance of white authorities who intervened to save and protect Ringo from the predations of angry mobs and racist courts. It situates Ringo’s exploits within the oppositional/alternative nature of African American working-class life, the failure …