The Culver Academies’ Black Horse Troop and Equestriennes recently announced that they have accepted an invitation to participate in the Presidential Inaugural Parade on Jan. 21 for President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. Culver Academies celebrates this return to the Capitol in the centennial year of Culver’s first inaugural appearance in 1913.
The 2013 Inaugural Parade marks the 100th anniversary of the Black Horse Troop’s first ride down Pennsylvania Avenue when the mounted unit served as the official escort for Vice President Thomas Marshall during Woodrow Wilson’s inaugural parade in 1913 and again in 1917. Marshall was governor of Indiana for five years from 1909 to 1913.
The 2013 inaugural will mark the 16th appearance in the parade for the Black Horse Troop and the seventh for the Equestriennes. After the 1917 inaugural parade, Culver went 40 years before returning to Washington in 1957 for President Eisenhower’s second term. The school has been represented by mounted units at every parade since, except in 1993 when an invitation for President Clinton’s first inaugural parade was not extended.
The parade will be televised live on several networks with uninterrupted coverage on C-SPAN.
