Born in Tampa, Florida, David Fagen was a Black soldier who enlisted in the U.S. Army’s 24th Infantry Regiment, a unit of Black soldiers known as Buffalo Soldiers during the Philippine-American War (1899-1902). After facing racism within the Army and seeing the treatment of Filipinos by American forces, Fagen defected and joined the Filipino revolutionary army.
Fagen quickly rose in the ranks under General José Alejandrino, and became a captain and becoming a skilled guerrilla leader in central Luzon. U.S. forces considered him a dangerous insurgent, placing a bounty on his head, while Filipinos dubbed him as “General Fagen.”
Fagen joining the Filipino revolutionary army was not a good look for U.S. military and there was something poetic about a Black soldier fighting on behalf of an imperial power that denied him full civil rights at home.
A severed head found in December 1901 was presented as proof of his death, but historians question its authenticity. Other accounts suggest he escaped into the mountains and lived quietly in the Philippines.
Fagen will forever be a symbol of cross-cultural resistance against both colonialism and racial injustice.
