BUFFALO SOLDIERS RECALL PROUD PAST.

Byline: David R. Baker Daily News Staff Writer

Come New Year's day, C.F. Brown of Burbank will rise before dawn, don the uniform of a cavalry unit from another century and brace himself for the humbling applause of a million people.

It's humbling, Brown said, because the crowd's cheers at the Tournament of Roses parade won't be for him or for the other members of the New Buffalo Soldiers. Instead, they will be for long-dead men, African-Americans in a white army, who patrolled the western frontier after the Civil War.

Men who blazed trails for their people in both the military and society. Men including Brown's grandfather, an Army cook early in this century.

``It humbles me, man,'' Brown said, remembering the applause of past Rose Parade crowds. ``I mean, I'm on a high, but it really humbles me when I stop and think of all the people who see me, and I'm representing him and all the other Buffalo Soldiers.

``You think of all they had to endure, and I'm reaping the benefits of all that.''

This year will mark the New Buffalo Soldiers' fourth appearance in the Tournament of Roses. For the 15-member group - a mix of Los Angeles-area professionals and tradesmen - the parade represents another chance to teach a history lesson long forgotten by much of the country.

There was a time, toward the end of the 19th century, when the original Buffalo Soldiers were widely known, said Lee Rutledge, the new group's historian. Named by American Indians on the Great Plains, who likened their hair to the wooly fur on a bison's head, the mounted soldiers earned respect from white soldiers for their bravery.

That respect was hard-won. White military officials considered the idea of an African-American Army unit an experiment whose success was far from guaranteed. White civilians sometimes resented the group's presence.

But the soldiers, and the idea of a multiracial military, stuck. Eventually, all African-American Army members were known as Buffalo Soldiers, and the name stayed in use until World War II, Rutledge said.

Hidden history

Starting around World War I, however, African-Americans experienced yet another backlash in public sentiment, Rutledge said. When new histories of the West were written, Buffalo Soldiers were rarely mentioned.

University of Nebraska historian John Wunder said that although scholars remained interested in the topic, relatively little of their research found its way into textbooks.

``It's been out there,'' Wunder said. ``Like a great deal of African-American history, it hadn't been included in general texts until the last 30 years.''

It certainly wasn't part of Rutledge's history lessons as a teen-ager in 1950s Riverside. He first stumbled across a description of the soldiers while researching an extra credit assignment on army field uniforms.

``I was totally shocked,'' he said. ``We were steeped in `Hop-along Cassidy' in those days. We never heard about black people in the West.''

Now, widespread ignorance of the soldiers has given way to interest - a change spurred in part by pop culture, African-American pride and the work of re-enactment groups like the New Buffalo Soldiers.

Group founder John Mapp traces his organization's birth to his interest in military relics and the film ``Glory,'' starring Denzel Washington. After watching the movie, about an African-American infantry unit in the Civil War, Mapp joined a military re-enactment group. His interest in African-American military history, and the Buffalo Soldiers, grew.

Buffalo Soldier stamps

Mapp wasn't the only one paying more attention to the soldiers. The U.S. Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp in 1994. Two years earlier, Colin Powell, then-chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, helped dedicate a monument to the soldiers at their old Kansas base.

``All these things, all tied together, increased the level of interest,'' Mapp said. ``And there were a lot of people who wanted this story to be told.''

Mapp organized the group in 1992 as a kind of living educational tool. Although members ride in parades and have appeared in movies (including a new Turner Network Television film about the Buffalo Soldiers), the group's main activity is touring local schools to lecture on the soldiers' way of life and duties on the frontier.

Younger kids often haven't heard of the soldiers. Older ones may only know the song by late reggae artist Bob Marley. But the group's members say that kids of different ages, and races, seem genuinely interested in the soldiers' story.

That is just the way the group's members want it. They present the soldiers as part of Americans' shared history and are pleased that the parade crowds they have seen so far seem to share that view.

``It almost brings tears to my eyes, seeing people cheering black troops,'' said group President August Simien. ``Especially if you know the history.''

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Photo, map

PHOTO (color) August Simien, left, and C.F. Brown dress in 19th-century U.S. cavalry uniforms as members of the New Buffalo Soldiers troop.

David R. Crane/Daily News