Cathay Williams entered the Army under a name that concealed her gender. The surviving record asks readers to notice the service before deciding what the record should have made possible.
A name on the enlistment paper
The U.S. Army identifies Cathay Williams as the first documented African-American woman to enlist in the Army. She enlisted in 1866 under the pseudonym William Cathay.
The choice of name was not a small detail. It was the condition that made enlistment possible in a military system that did not recognize women as soldiers in the way it recognized men. Her service entered the official record through a disguise the institution required.
Service in a male uniform
The Army’s account describes Williams as the only documented woman to serve while posing as a man. She remained in the Army until receiving a medical discharge in 1868.
Those two years are easy to flatten into a headline. They deserve a fuller reading: Williams made a choice to enlist, carried the obligations of military service, and left a record that complicates the boundaries later histories placed around the word soldier.
What the record makes visible
Historical documents from the period do not answer every question about Williams’s life. They do establish the central fact that a Black woman entered the Army under a male name and served long enough to receive a medical discharge.
That limited record is still powerful. It widens the history of Black military service beyond the categories institutions were prepared to recognize at the time.