photo #9401659

Black Jack was a coal black American Quarter Horse born in 1947, named in honor of General John J. "Black Jack" Pershing. In 1953, he arrived at Fort Myer, Virginia, and joined the Caisson Platoon of the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Regiment. Too spirited to be ridden, he found his true calling as a caparisoned horse, walking riderless behind the caisson at military funerals with an empty saddle and boots reversed in the stirrups.Over the next two decades, Black Jack served in more than a thousand funerals at Arlington National Cemetery. He carried that solemn duty for three American presidents: Herbert Hoover, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson, as well as for General of the Army Douglas MacArthur. It was his role in President Kennedy's funeral, broadcast to a grieving nation in 1963, that etched him into American memory forever.Black Jack retired in 1973 and passed away in 1976 at the age of 29. He was buried at Fort Myer with full military honors, only the second horse in American history to receive that distinction. For twenty years, his steady presence helped a nation carry its grief with dignity.