Matt Stell reports: Bob’s Buffalo Soldiers | KLBK | KAMC

LUBBOCK, Texas – Karen Partee, chairwoman of the Texas Arts Commission, understands that the story of America’s Buffalo Soldiers isn’t familiar to many people.

“They really helped settle the West,” Partee said. “They were formed right after the Civil War in 1866 and headed to Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico in 1867.”

Many Buffalo Soldiers were former slaves in the Southern Confederacy, some lived as “freemen” in the North, and others fought in the war themselves. Their pay of $13 a month was low, but historians say African American men enlisted because they could be treated with more dignity than they often received in civilian life.

“They protected the pioneers as they moved west from the east,” Partee said. “They also protected those who laid the railroad and those who laid the telegraph.”

Members of the all-black 9th and 10th were given the name “Buffalo Soldiers” by the Native Americans with whom they interacted on the regular bases. Native Americans believed that the hair of black cavalry troops resembled that of a buffalo.

“It’s not just a story about black history because it’s black soldiers,” Partee said. “Many contributions have been made to the overall historical picture of who we are as a society. »

It was these contributions that first intrigued George Robert “Bob” Snead in 1956. At the time, he was a young soldier in the United States Army.

“He didn’t know anything about them (the Buffalo Soldiers) and he had seen a film with them so he went to his superior officer and asked ‘who are these men in blue?’ said Partee, who is also Snead’s daughter.

Partee said his father’s superior officer asked him to conduct research on the 9th and 10th Cavalries. After years of studying the Buffalo Soldiers, Snead, who was a self-taught artist, began painting portraits of the men he had discovered.

“I think even Dad, from a young age, didn’t know the limits of his talent and what he could bring to the table,” Snead’s son Chris said.

This brought us a collection of over 50 years of paintings of Buffalo Soldiers, all by Snead, to document an often forgotten history.

“The whole point of him doing the collection is that the story of the Buffalo Soldiers needed to be told and it wasn’t,” Partee said.

Chris believes his father used his platform to open “the eyes and ears of the world” to a group of soldiers who remained largely unknown for much of their history.

Between now and November, a small portion of Snead’s collection is on display at the Museum of Texas Tech in Lubbock.

“There are 167 pieces in the Buffalo Solider exhibit, but they are never presented together in their entirety,” Partee said.

As a 1994 Texas Tech graduate, Chris said the exhibit has been in the works for some time.

“This is indeed a watershed moment for me,” Chris said. “It’s a moment I’ve been looking forward to for literally half my life.”

Asked if an exhibition of this magnitude was what his father would have wanted, Partee said it would be a “parody” for the paintings to be kept in private collections.

“My father didn’t paint pictures to hang on his wall,” Partee said.

Snead served in the United States Army for more than 30 years. As a highly decorated helicopter pilot, Snead flew four missions during the Vietnam War, earned several Purple Hearts and received the Master Aviator Badge.

Alongside his military service, Snead always had a true passion for the arts. He was a comedian, was appointed to the Texas Arts Commission by then-Governor George W. Bush, and was one of the designers of the Texas State Quarter. In 2024, Partee was appointed chair of the same commission on which her father served.

“I want people to come see these paintings and know this history,” Partee said.

In 2020, Snead died at the age of 84. He was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, later that year.

Although he won’t be able to see his exhibit in Lubbock, the Snead family told us they will do everything they can to make sure his work lives on.

“This is our love letter to him and we’re going to continue to tell this story,” Partee said.