Date of Award
2-4-2025
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
History, MA
First Advisor
Erik Gilbert
Committee Members
Edward Salo; Kellie Buford
Call Number
LD 251 .A566t 2024 K75
Abstract
The Military Order of the Serpent (M.O.S.) was an American anti-Filipino minstrel fraternity and veterans' organization comprised of members of the United Spanish War Veterans. To commemorate the Philippine-American War, the group dressed in Filipino blackface and paraded around the United States from 1904 to 1974. Publicly, the group’s narrative arc posited that Filipinos, by virtue of their contact with the United States Military, underwent a rapid, three-phased evolution from savage to civil. Privately, they celebrated one of the war’s atrocities, and expressed their racist hostilities and amalgamationist anxieties. During the 1920s, when Filipino emigration to the United States began to increase, the drawn caricatures produced by the group became less human and more monstrous as exclusionary immigration laws were passed. The M.O.S. offers a previously unknown glimpse into the subsumption of the Philippine War by the Spanish-American War’s more palatable narrative.
Rights Management
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Kriner, Eric Jason, "The Military Order of the Serpent and Philippine War Memory, 1904-1974" (2025). Student Theses and Dissertations. 1044.
https://arch.astate.edu/all-etd/1044
