On October 25, 1950, the United States Army activated the 2nd Ranger Infantry Company (Airborne) at Fort Benning, Georgia. It was the first and only all-Black Airborne Ranger unit in the history of the American military. It was commanded by Black officers — First Lieutenant Warren E. Allen in command, Second Lieutenant James Harvey as executive officer. Its soldiers were volunteers who had heard that Ranger sign-ups were taking place and gone immediately, who had trained to a standard that the Army officially insisted Black men could not meet, and who would go on to make the only combat jump in history ever executed by an all-Black Ranger unit. They were activated in the context of the Korean War, trained in the compressed timeline that war required, and deployed to one of the most brutal combat environments American soldiers had faced since the Pacific theater of WWII. They performed with distinction. Their unit was inactivated eight months after it was activated, before most Americans knew it had existed.
The 2nd Rangers were one of several Ranger companies activated at the beginning of the Korean War, when the Army recognized that it needed the kind of small-unit infiltration and direct-action capability that Rangers provided. The first volunteers came overwhelmingly from the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg — the same division that had integrated the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion in 1946. The 2nd Rangers drew their volunteers from Black soldiers across the Army who had heard the call and responded. They trained at Fort Benning under the same demanding standards as every other Ranger company — standards that included physical fitness, weapons proficiency, airborne qualification, and small-unit tactics. They met every standard. They were deployed to Korea in December 1950, arriving in temperatures of twenty degrees below zero, transported in open trucks without canvas covers. Several soldiers were evacuated immediately for frostbitten feet. The rest stayed and fought.
On March 23, 1951, the 2nd Ranger Infantry Company participated in Operation Tomahawk — a massive airborne assault near Munsan-ni, Korea, involving over 3,400 paratroopers. The 2nd Rangers jumped with the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team. It was the only combat jump ever made by an all-Black Ranger unit. They landed in frozen Korean countryside, assembled under fire, and executed their mission. Herculano Dias, one of the soldiers who made that jump, described it decades later with the directness of a man who had survived something most people cannot imagine: “We jumped March 23, 1951, in a place called Munsan-Ni, Korea.” The simplicity of the statement contains everything — the date, the place, and the fact of what they did. The 2nd Rangers also fought at the Battle of the Soyang River in May 1951, one of the most intense engagements of the Korean War. They conducted patrols, guarded supply routes, fought in conditions of extreme cold and constant danger, and maintained the standards of excellence that Ranger selection required.
The 2nd Ranger Infantry Company was inactivated on August 1, 1951 — eight months after its activation. The Army was reorganizing, the Ranger program was being restructured, and the segregated all-Black Ranger company was discontinued. The men who had served in it were assigned to other units. The unit’s combat record was filed. Its story was not widely told. The Army’s official history of the Ranger program noted the 2nd Rangers’ existence and their combat jump but did not prominently feature their story in the broader narrative of Ranger history. Decades passed. Veterans of the unit grew old. In 2014, four of them — Donald Allen, Richard Briscoe, Herculano Dias, and Winston Jackson — were honored at a Twilight Tattoo ceremony at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, hosted by the Sergeant Major of the Army. It was one of the first formal recognitions their service had received. Briscoe remembered the moment he volunteered: he jumped off his bunk and went down the hall to sign up. Jackson remembered moving up in rank fast and never knowing who was watching. Allen and Dias remembered the cold and the combat and the pride. They had been the first and only. They remained the first and only. That is the record.