The 24th Infantry Regiment of Buffalo Soldiers, an all-black outfit, have made major historical contributions, but retired Lt. Col. Earnest E. Varner told veterans of the group they still have a responsibility to share their knowledge with others.

“I could say ‘Yay! Yay!’, give a history lesson and give applause, but we have work to do today, and my past says that these guys still have stuff to contribute,” Lt. Col. Varner said.

Lt. Col. Varner, a Riverside High School graduate, is scheduled to speak Saturday to the Buffalo Soldiers at the 24th Infantry’s 22nd annual reunion banquet.

An estimated 200 soldiers of the 24th infantry gathered in Chattanooga from Wednesday through Saturday to share war stories and fellowship. The men are among the last of the all-black fighting regiments, first established by Congress in 1866. Six all-black regiments were created as peacetime units to help settle the western United States after the Civil War.

“We wanted to be proud of ourselves, proud of our country and to let people know that we were somebody,” said 76-year-old Clyde Jones of Dayton, Tenn., the chairman of the reunion who served in the Korean War. “We fought hard for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Jack Edward, 80, of Merrimack, N.H., advised all young men to spend at least two years in the military.

“Especially if you can’t find a job, it gives you a chance to travel and to meet people instead of hanging out on the streets,” Mr. Edward said.

Buffalo Soldiers were given their nickname by American Indian tribes in the West who respected their tenacity and fierce fighting ability, according to the Web site of the Buffalo Soldiers National Museum in Houston, Texas. About 500 Buffalo Soldiers survive nationwide, according to the Web site.

Most members of the group in Chattanooga this week are in their 70s and 80s, but they hold wisdom that could be used to help younger leaders survive, Lt. Col. Varner said. It was older soldiers who prepared him to be a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army by sharing their stories with him while he was a teenager, he said.

The Buffalo Soldiers laid the foundation for other blacks in the military to succeed, Lt. Col. Varner said. Back in the 1940s and ’50s, few people could imagine a black national security advisor in the White House, he said. But Gen. Colin Powell took the position in 1987 and, in 2001, president George W. Bush named him the U.S. secretary of state.

Lt. Col. Varner, a professionally trained artist, uses a series of paintings that include Gen. Powell and the Buffalo Soldiers to express the soldiers’ accomplishments as well as the discrimination that still exists in the United States. He calls the paintings “The Longest Mile” series.

“(Blacks) have pride in the Buffalo Soldiers and in America, but there is still a distance to go before we are totally emerged in the American system,” Lt. Col. Varner said.

A black man has yet to become president of the United States, but with Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., as the presumptive Democratic party nominee, the idea isn’t farfetched, Lt. Col. Varner said.

“We have the possibility to have a quantum leap with not only politics but with culture,” he said. “This leap could not be possible without the Buffalo Soldiers. They came before us and said ‘Yes, we will take the discrimination and still do the best we can.’”

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