June 13, 2020 • 24 mins
This 2015 episode covers a black U.S. Army WWI unit that became one of the most decorated of the war. When these soldiers returned home, they were greeted as heroes, but were still targets of segregation, discrimination and oppression.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
I'm Happy Saturday, everyone. Today's classic episode looks at the
Harlem Hellfighters. This is a segregated army unit in World
War One, and it also specifically focuses on Henry Johnson,
who was a member of that unit who was posthumously
awarded the Medal of Honor on June two. One of
the things that this episode talks about is the connection
between returning World War Two veterans and the Civil rights
(00:24):
movement in the United States, and why there wasn't a
similar movement when black veterans returned from World War One.
A piece of that discussion is Red Summer, which we
talked about in more detail in our episode from June three.
This episode originally came out on November two. Welcome to
(00:45):
Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy
Wilson and I'm Holly Frown. Pretty recently, we talked about
Maccario Garcia, and we talked in that episode about how
(01:05):
World War Two often comes up as one of the
factors of many that led to the United States Civil
Rights movement. So told very simply soldiers who had put
their lives on the line to serve their country and
to fight against oppression abroad, came back home to fight
against depression where they actually lived. And this story is
usually told as it related to African American soldiers in
(01:28):
World War Two, and in this particular case of the
episode we already did. Maccario Garcia was a Mexican national,
so after he returned from World War Two, his experience
being denied service at a Texas restaurant contributed to a
social movement for equal rights for Mexican Americans and other
Hispanics and Latinos who were living in that part of
the United States. So when we did that episode on
(01:50):
Macario Garcia, we hinted that World War Two was not
the only time that happened, that the subject of that
was going to be in an upcoming episode, and that
is two days episod sawed. We are going to tell
this story about World War One's effect on civil rights
in the United States by talking about the Harlem Health Fighters.
This was a segregated regiment that served in combat in
(02:12):
World War One, So we're going to start by talking
about the regiment itself. Then we are going to talk
about one of its most decorated members, as an example
of the just really exceptional valor and courage that the
health fighters exhibited while they were serving in World War One.
And lastly, we're going to talk about why World War
One does not come up very often when we're talking
(02:35):
about things that inspired civil rights activity in the United States.
It's much more overshadowed by World War Two. And whenever
we talk about segregation on the podcast, we make it
a point to note that the practice was not something
that was confined to the South. That sort of rumor
sort of persists. Yeah, somebody emailed us about it the
other day. Even though I feel like we keep saying it,
(02:57):
We're gonna say it again today very directly. Not just South.
Although formalized, legally enforced segregation persisted in the South longer
than it did than it did in many other parts
of the United States, And in a lot of ways
it was most obvious there, which is also here where
we are. Uh, segregation really existed all over the nation.
(03:17):
For example, President Woodrow Wilson, who had promised in his
campaign to treat African Americans fairly if he was elected,
instead started taking steps to allow segregation of federal government
positions almost immediately after his inauguration in nine many many
black federal workers all over the country were segregated or
(03:37):
flat out dismissed. As a result, the United States armed
forces were segregated as well, and the years leading up
to World War One, the Marines did not accept black
soldiers at all. The Navy did accept a few, although
most of them were restricted to support and manual labor roles,
so most black soldiers who served in the military wound
(03:57):
up serving in the Army, which was ggregated. There were
also almost no black Army officers, and the black Army
officers who did exist were not ever placed in command
of white soldiers. They were only placed in command of
black soldiers. In addition to being restricted to segregated units,
black soldiers serving in World War One faced violence while
(04:20):
still in the United States before being sent overseas. These
men were sent into the South, sometimes the Deep South,
to be trained, and large numbers of armed black men
were often explicitly not wanted in the Southern States, and
the sudden influx of so many black soldiers led to
some very real hostilities and on more than one occasion,
riots and murders. The army has also been fairly candid
(04:44):
and acknowledging that it discriminated specifically against black soldiers during
this time, apart from just placing them in segregated units, which,
as we have talked and many other podcasts before, segregation
based on races inherently discriminatory. So command at this point
did not think that black men were suited for combat.
(05:05):
They were viewed as untrustworthy and lazy and complacent, so
overwhelmingly black soldiers were assigned to work as manual labors.
So most of the two hundred thousand black soldiers who
went overseas in World War One wound up working as stevedor's.
They dug ditches, they dug latrines, and to be clear,
this was absolutely essential work. It needed to be done,
(05:26):
but it was also often backbreaking and degrading, and overwhelmingly
being assigned to only the black soldiers. Black soldiers were
also the ones who were frequently tasked with burying the dead.
Only about forty two thousand Black soldiers saw combat in
World War One. These men served in the ninety second
and ninety three combat divisions. The ninety two mostly comprised
(05:47):
men who had been drafted along with their officers and
was part of the muse Agne Offensive in nineteen eighteen.
This offensive did not go as well as hoped, and
the ninety two wound up being a scapegoat for everything
that had gone wrong. Their time in combat was brief.
On the other hand, was made up primarily of National
Guard units, including the fifteenth New York Colored Regiment. About
(06:10):
seventy percent of the men in this regiment were from
Harlem in New York, and these were the men who
would go on to be nicknamed the Harlem Health Fighters.
The ninety three Combat Division, under the command of Colonel
William Hayward, wound up essentially being loaned to France to
fill a labor shortage in their own army. And this
was in spite of the fact that when the United
(06:30):
States entered the war, the President had assured the population
that US soldiers would not be on loan to other armies.
They would be fighting as American units under American command.
So when it went overseas, the fifteenth New York Colored
Regiment was renamed the three hundred sixty ninth Infantry, and
the three hundred sixty nine served a hundred and ninety
one days in combat. This was longer than any other
(06:53):
American unit in World War One. Contrary to the American
military's assumption that black soldiers were outfit for combat and
for their expectations for how black soldiers would perform, the
three sixty nine Inventory became one of the most decorated
units to serve in the war. Much like German forces
named Russia's all female night bombers the night Witches in
(07:15):
World War Two, they nicknamed the three nine the bloeterstick
Shvartza Mana or the Bloodthirsty black Men in World War One,
and this nickname was eventually translated into the hell Fighters.
In addition to their consistent valor and high performance in combat,
the three sixty nine Inventories marching band was also a
(07:39):
skilled and talented one and was one of the ways
that jazz music made its way from the United States
to France during the war. The Harlem hell Fighters time
in combat was so prolonged and it touched so many
actions on the Western Front that it's actually difficult to
get a sense of their remarkable heroism in valor. So
to get a glimpse of it, uh, we are going
to talk about one of their most incredible members who
(08:02):
really exemplifies what we're talking about. But first we are
going to have a word from one of our great sponsors.
So we're going to tell the story of how the
ninth Infantry was pretty incredible in their service by talking
(08:24):
about specifically the story of Henry Johnson. Henry Johnson was
born William Henry Johnson in Winston Salem, North Carolina, and
he moved to New York when he was a teenager.
Once he got there, he worked at a variety of jobs,
most of them involving manual labor, until he eventually became
a red cat porter at the Albany, New York train station. Later,
(08:44):
he joined the National Guard unit that would become part
of the Harlem hell Fighters. In May of nineteen eighteen,
Henry Johnson and Needham Roberts, both of them then privates,
were acting as centuries at a lookout post in the
Argon Forest on the Western Front. John Hnson heard the
sound of someone snipping through barbed wire. Concluding that this
was a German advance, he sent Roberts to go for help,
(09:08):
called for help himself, and then lobbed grenades at the
source of the sound. It was indeed a German advance,
and the Germans returned fire with both grenades and bullets.
Roberts turned back to try to help Johnson, and both
men were hit. Roberts was actually hurt so badly that
he was not able to continue fighting, so he passed
(09:28):
grenades to Johnson, and Johnson threw them at the approaching
Germans until he ran out, and then Johnson got his
rifle and he fired upon the advancing German soldiers until
his weapon jammed after he accidentally tried to use an
American clip with a French rifle. At this point, the
German soldiers closed into hand to hand range, and so
Johnson tried to fight them off basically by swinging his
(09:50):
rifle like a club until the butt of it literally splintered.
And Johnson, we should point out, was not a large man.
He was only about five ft four you wait, about
a hundred dirty pounds, and once his rifle was destroyed,
he was struck in the head and knocked down. But
then he saw that the German soldiers were trying to
take the injured Private Roberts prisoner, so Johnson managed to
(10:11):
get to his feet. He pulled out the only weapon
he had left, which was his bolo knife, and he
fought back with that while trying to drag Roberts to safety. Fortunately,
at this point, the sounds of gunfire and grenades and
their calls for help had brought other soldiers to their aid,
so Johnson continued trying to drag Roberts away from the
fighting until he lost consciousness. Fortunately that was when reinforcements
(10:35):
arrived and the German soldiers who were still upright fled.
In the morning, it was revealed that then Private Johnson
had single handedly killed four enemy soldiers and wounded somewhere
between ten and twenty more, all while he was injured
himself with twenty one wounds, sustained in his combat and
refusing to allow his compatriot to be taken captive. So
(10:57):
both men were awarded the lot of Gear, which is
the French military decoration for valor and heroism. This made
Johnson and Roberts the first American privates of any race
to earn this recognition, and Johnson and Roberts were not
the only members of the Harlem Heal fighters to ultimately
be awarded the Quadi gear for their valor. All in all,
(11:18):
a hundred and seventy one individual members of the Harlem
Heal Fighters received the Quadi gear, and the unit as
a whole was awarded one as well for capturing say
Show while advancing ahead of French and other American lines.
The Harlem Heal Fighters were the first to reach the
Rhine after the armistice, and they were commended again and
again for their valor. So basically they performed above and
(11:42):
beyond the call for any combat unit, and especially in
a way that flew in the face of what the
American command was expecting of them. Yeah, I don't think
you could get a much more um, kind of poignant
portrait of heroism. Right. So, roughly eight hundred Harlem Hell
Fighters lost our lives in Europe. About three thousand others
(12:02):
returned home from the war. In February of nineteen nineteen,
they had a welcome home parade in which they marched
up Fifth Avenue in New York and into their home
neighborhood of Harlem. And this parade was in part to
make up for the fact that on their departure from
New York in December of nineteen seventeen, they had not
been permitted to take part in the New York National
Guards farewell Parade through New York City. The New York
(12:25):
National Guard was known as the Rainbow Division because it
included members from twenty seven states, and the reason for
the fifteenth New York Regiment's exclusion was black is not
a color of the Rainbow. On their return, however, the
Harlem health Fighters received a legitimate heroes welcome. Accounts very
wildly about how many people were there for the parade.
(12:46):
You will find news sources that site anywhere from two
hundred thousand people to more than two million. Johnson was
riding in a car for injured veterans, and in spite
of the fact that he had a shattered foot that
was held together with the metal plate, he stood up
to wave at them, and people called him Black Death.
The response from both white and black onlookers at the
(13:07):
parade was so a brilliantly positive that too many it
was a symbol of hope for improved race relations to come.
And this was bolstered by the fact that President Theodore
Roosevelt called Johnson one of the five bravest Americans to
serve in the war. That's high praise, and the army
used his image on recruitment posters and to sell victory
War stamps. I couldn't find a picture of this actual advertisement,
(13:30):
but reportedly what it says signed is Johnson licked a
dozen Germans. How many stamps have you LICKD I looked
for I because yeah, that's some copy right. So all
of this Johnson's fame is a war hero. The overwhelming
tide of support for the returning black veterans, this overall
theme that the war had been fought in a quote
(13:52):
to make the world safe for democracy, gave a lot
of people hope that this signaled a major change in
the social and legal status of African Americans and the
United States. Sadly, this was not to be true, and
we're going to talk about why and how after another
brief word from a sponsor. So, when he was committing
(14:20):
American troops to World War One, Woodrow Wilson very famously
said that quote the world must be made safe for democracy.
We alluded to that just before the break, But when
African American soldiers returned home to find that they were
still the targets of segregation, discrimination, and oppression, it really
seemed like there was an unspoken for white people at
the end of that sentence, hoping to tie the fight
(14:41):
for civil rights to the ideals that had underpinned the
United states very involvement in the war, and the fact
that so many black soldiers had returned as highly decorated heroes,
black civil rights leaders called for action. The idea of
making the world safe for democracy came up again and
again in art, call, speeches, pamphlets, and other materials about
(15:03):
equal rights for black citizens. In May of nineteen nineteen,
for example, W. E. B. D. Boys wrote quote, returning soldiers,
we return, we return from fighting. We return fighting make
way for democracy. We saved it in France, and by
the Great Jehovah, we will save it in the United
States of America. Or know the reason why. But this
(15:26):
is not the war that winds up being referenced in
terms of how it affected civil rights. That distinction always,
as we've said, goes to World War Two. The biggest
reason for this is that it's much easier to frame
World War Two as a more positive story. Following World
War Two, returning black veterans added their voices to a
growing grass grassroots movement all over the nation, which coalesced
(15:47):
into what we know is the civil rights movement today.
And although there was definitely a violent backlash and lots
of resistance. That was a hallmark tow part of this movement.
It did eventually lead to civil rights legislation that was
meant to help put Black Americans on more equal footing.
That's an oversimplified way to look at World War two,
(16:08):
but no amount of oversimplification can put the years following
World War One into such a positive light. World War
One ended on November eleventh of nineteen eighteen. The following summer,
violence broke out all over the United States, driven by
a number of social and economic factors. One was a
backlash against advocacy for equal treatment of African Americans, especially
(16:31):
as others began to view this movement as militant. But
also in play was the return of soldiers who had
fought in the war, colliding with what's known as the
Great Migration. So in the Great Migration, which peaked between
nineteen fourteen and nineteen twenty, huge numbers of African Americans
living in the South moved north. Many of them were
(16:51):
fleeing poverty and social and political oppression. People who had
been living as sharecroppers in the South moved north to
get industrial jobs, many of which were tied to the
war effort in the hope of getting better incomes and
more freedom. So this dramatically shifted the racial landscape and
many northern cities. This also meant that many white veterans
(17:13):
in the North returned home to find that their industrial
jobs had been filled by black workers who had moved
up from the South. Returning soldiers of all races and
ethnicities wound up in competition for a shrinking supply of jobs.
As a result of these and many other factors, the
summer of nineteen nineteen was so violent and so deadly
that it came to be known as Red Summer. Eighty
(17:35):
three people are known to have been lynched in nineteen nineteen,
up from sixty four in nineteen eighteen who Klex Klan
activity also spread, especially in the South, and then there
were what is often described as race riots, which broke
out in Washington, d c. Chicago, Omaha, Knoxville, and many
other cities. However, as we discussed in our episode on
(17:59):
the Tulsa race it and Black Wall Street, the term
race riot is often a misnomer because it suggests racial
violence in which the races involved are equal aggressors. It
was a misnomer during the destruction of Black Wall Street
in Tulsa, and it was a misnomer. During Red Summer,
overwhelmingly the instigators in Red Summer were white citizens, and
(18:19):
overwhelmingly Black people, along with their homes, businesses, and entire neighborhoods,
were the victims. One of the most dramatic moments in
Red Summer took place that July when a riot broke
out in Chicago after a black teenager drowned. He had
been using a customarily whites only beach and people did
not like that and they stoned him, so he drowned
(18:40):
after being stoned. As a result of this particular riot,
almost forty people were killed, five hundred were injured, and
about a thousand Black families were left homeless after a
white mob burned their homes down. The last major event
in Red Summer actually took place in October and he
lay in Arkansas, black sharecroppers, attempting to organize themselves to
(19:03):
advocate for better treatment were massacred by a white mob.
Somewhere between one hundred and two hundred Black sharecroppers were killed.
In the aftermath, many more black share croppers were arrested
and jailed. Many were put on trial, and some were
sentenced to death by all white juries even though they
had actually been the victims and not the instigators. So
(19:26):
that's why, even though World War One inspired a ground
swell of organized advocacy for equal rights for black citizens,
it doesn't come to the forefront very often. And it's
also not a particularly good place to end this episode,
So we are going to turn back to the story
of Henry Johnson for a moment. So there's widespread belief
that Johnson received no disability compensation from the government because
(19:49):
of the clerical error in his discharged papers, and that
he died in obscure poverty. So while the last part
of that is actually sadly mostly true, the first part
does not hold up a the examination of the records.
News articles and military records from the time indicate that
Johnson was a patient at Walter Reed Hospital, that he
received a disability statement stipend of about ninety dollars a month,
(20:12):
which would not have been a lot of money, but
was there. Most of this misinformation stems from the fact
that Herman Johnson, who served with a Tuskeye Airmen, seems
to have mistakenly genuinely believed that Henry Johnson was his father.
He gave interviews about his father's life that were based
on his own knowledge, which was actually incomplete, and Johnson
(20:35):
did die at a sadly young age of myocarditis, after
having had a series of complications with the many injuries
he sustained in combat, along with tuberculosis. He was buried
in Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors on July five.
The sight of his grave was actually lost until two
thousand two. In the intervening years, his family had believed
(20:58):
that he was actually buried in an anonymous grave in Albany,
in part because they had lost touch with him, and
in part because the Army made a clerical error in
the name of who was buried in the grave. Henry
Johnson was posthumously awarded a Purple Heart, which is for
soldiers who were wounded or killed in action in it
didn't actually exist yet when he was wounded. In two
(21:20):
thousand three, after the location of his grave was found,
he was also awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, and he
was posthumously promoted to sergeant after finding a memo from
General John J. Pershing describing Johnson's velorous deeds in a database.
Senator Charles Schumer of New York started a petition to
have imposthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. Sergeant Henry Johnson
(21:43):
was awarded the Medal of Honor on June two. It
was accepted on his behalf by Command Sergeant Major Lewis
Wilson of the New York National Guarden. His official citation
ends quote Private Johnson's extraordinary heroism and selflessness above and
beyond the call of duty are in keeping with the
highest traditions of military service, and reflect great credit upon himself,
(22:05):
his unit, and the United States Army. And there's also
a cool graphic novel about the whole thing. I think
it is probably cool. It's by Max Brooks, who has
done a lot of other graphic novels, some of them
not historically related at all. I did check it out
from the library. I have not yet had time to
read it before recording this episode, but it looks really good. Ah,
(22:29):
so that is it is. Well, it's kind of a
meandering story through. I think I might have said this
in the show before. We have three categories of sad episodes, right,
we have the ones that we know we're going to
be sad, and then we get into it and we
realize it's a lot sadder than we thought. And then
we have the ones that we know we're gonna be
really sad, but we are doing them because we think
(22:50):
it's important or maybe a lot of people have asked
us to do it. And then we have the ones
that are like today, which is that I picked something
because it sounds cool, and then I get into it
and I go, oh, this is this is hurting me.
So I had picked the Harlem hell Fighters based on
probably a uh like a blog post or a tumbler
post or something somewhere that was about this really amazing
(23:13):
all black fighting regiment in World War One and how
great they were and how much valor and bravery they
exhibited and how awesome. And I was like, well, yeah,
I want to talk about those guys. And then I
was like, oh, dear, this sad, Oh sad things are happening.
YEA history is full of those surprise little pop up.
(23:38):
Thank you so much for joining us today for this
Saturday classic. If you have heard any kind of email
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course of the episode that might be obsolete. It might
be doubly obsolete because we have changed our email address again.
You can now reach us at history podcast at i
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at missed in History and you can subscribe to our
(24:00):
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in History Class is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
I'm Happy Saturday, everyone. Today's classic episode looks at the
Harlem Hellfighters. This is a segregated army unit in World
War One, and it also specifically focuses on Henry Johnson,
who was a member of that unit who was posthumously
awarded the Medal of Honor on June two. One of
the things that this episode talks about is the connection
between returning World War Two veterans and the Civil rights
(00:24):
movement in the United States, and why there wasn't a
similar movement when black veterans returned from World War One.
A piece of that discussion is Red Summer, which we
talked about in more detail in our episode from June three.
This episode originally came out on November two. Welcome to
(00:45):
Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy
Wilson and I'm Holly Frown. Pretty recently, we talked about
Maccario Garcia, and we talked in that episode about how
(01:05):
World War Two often comes up as one of the
factors of many that led to the United States Civil
Rights movement. So told very simply soldiers who had put
their lives on the line to serve their country and
to fight against oppression abroad, came back home to fight
against depression where they actually lived. And this story is
usually told as it related to African American soldiers in
(01:28):
World War Two, and in this particular case of the
episode we already did. Maccario Garcia was a Mexican national,
so after he returned from World War Two, his experience
being denied service at a Texas restaurant contributed to a
social movement for equal rights for Mexican Americans and other
Hispanics and Latinos who were living in that part of
the United States. So when we did that episode on
(01:50):
Macario Garcia, we hinted that World War Two was not
the only time that happened, that the subject of that
was going to be in an upcoming episode, and that
is two days episod sawed. We are going to tell
this story about World War One's effect on civil rights
in the United States by talking about the Harlem Health Fighters.
This was a segregated regiment that served in combat in
(02:12):
World War One, So we're going to start by talking
about the regiment itself. Then we are going to talk
about one of its most decorated members, as an example
of the just really exceptional valor and courage that the
health fighters exhibited while they were serving in World War One.
And lastly, we're going to talk about why World War
One does not come up very often when we're talking
(02:35):
about things that inspired civil rights activity in the United States.
It's much more overshadowed by World War Two. And whenever
we talk about segregation on the podcast, we make it
a point to note that the practice was not something
that was confined to the South. That sort of rumor
sort of persists. Yeah, somebody emailed us about it the
other day. Even though I feel like we keep saying it,
(02:57):
We're gonna say it again today very directly. Not just South.
Although formalized, legally enforced segregation persisted in the South longer
than it did than it did in many other parts
of the United States, And in a lot of ways
it was most obvious there, which is also here where
we are. Uh, segregation really existed all over the nation.
(03:17):
For example, President Woodrow Wilson, who had promised in his
campaign to treat African Americans fairly if he was elected,
instead started taking steps to allow segregation of federal government
positions almost immediately after his inauguration in nine many many
black federal workers all over the country were segregated or
(03:37):
flat out dismissed. As a result, the United States armed
forces were segregated as well, and the years leading up
to World War One, the Marines did not accept black
soldiers at all. The Navy did accept a few, although
most of them were restricted to support and manual labor roles,
so most black soldiers who served in the military wound
(03:57):
up serving in the Army, which was ggregated. There were
also almost no black Army officers, and the black Army
officers who did exist were not ever placed in command
of white soldiers. They were only placed in command of
black soldiers. In addition to being restricted to segregated units,
black soldiers serving in World War One faced violence while
(04:20):
still in the United States before being sent overseas. These
men were sent into the South, sometimes the Deep South,
to be trained, and large numbers of armed black men
were often explicitly not wanted in the Southern States, and
the sudden influx of so many black soldiers led to
some very real hostilities and on more than one occasion,
riots and murders. The army has also been fairly candid
(04:44):
and acknowledging that it discriminated specifically against black soldiers during
this time, apart from just placing them in segregated units, which,
as we have talked and many other podcasts before, segregation
based on races inherently discriminatory. So command at this point
did not think that black men were suited for combat.
(05:05):
They were viewed as untrustworthy and lazy and complacent, so
overwhelmingly black soldiers were assigned to work as manual labors.
So most of the two hundred thousand black soldiers who
went overseas in World War One wound up working as stevedor's.
They dug ditches, they dug latrines, and to be clear,
this was absolutely essential work. It needed to be done,
(05:26):
but it was also often backbreaking and degrading, and overwhelmingly
being assigned to only the black soldiers. Black soldiers were
also the ones who were frequently tasked with burying the dead.
Only about forty two thousand Black soldiers saw combat in
World War One. These men served in the ninety second
and ninety three combat divisions. The ninety two mostly comprised
(05:47):
men who had been drafted along with their officers and
was part of the muse Agne Offensive in nineteen eighteen.
This offensive did not go as well as hoped, and
the ninety two wound up being a scapegoat for everything
that had gone wrong. Their time in combat was brief.
On the other hand, was made up primarily of National
Guard units, including the fifteenth New York Colored Regiment. About
(06:10):
seventy percent of the men in this regiment were from
Harlem in New York, and these were the men who
would go on to be nicknamed the Harlem Health Fighters.
The ninety three Combat Division, under the command of Colonel
William Hayward, wound up essentially being loaned to France to
fill a labor shortage in their own army. And this
was in spite of the fact that when the United
(06:30):
States entered the war, the President had assured the population
that US soldiers would not be on loan to other armies.
They would be fighting as American units under American command.
So when it went overseas, the fifteenth New York Colored
Regiment was renamed the three hundred sixty ninth Infantry, and
the three hundred sixty nine served a hundred and ninety
one days in combat. This was longer than any other
(06:53):
American unit in World War One. Contrary to the American
military's assumption that black soldiers were outfit for combat and
for their expectations for how black soldiers would perform, the
three sixty nine Inventory became one of the most decorated
units to serve in the war. Much like German forces
named Russia's all female night bombers the night Witches in
(07:15):
World War Two, they nicknamed the three nine the bloeterstick
Shvartza Mana or the Bloodthirsty black Men in World War One,
and this nickname was eventually translated into the hell Fighters.
In addition to their consistent valor and high performance in combat,
the three sixty nine Inventories marching band was also a
(07:39):
skilled and talented one and was one of the ways
that jazz music made its way from the United States
to France during the war. The Harlem hell Fighters time
in combat was so prolonged and it touched so many
actions on the Western Front that it's actually difficult to
get a sense of their remarkable heroism in valor. So
to get a glimpse of it, uh, we are going
to talk about one of their most incredible members who
(08:02):
really exemplifies what we're talking about. But first we are
going to have a word from one of our great sponsors.
So we're going to tell the story of how the
ninth Infantry was pretty incredible in their service by talking
(08:24):
about specifically the story of Henry Johnson. Henry Johnson was
born William Henry Johnson in Winston Salem, North Carolina, and
he moved to New York when he was a teenager.
Once he got there, he worked at a variety of jobs,
most of them involving manual labor, until he eventually became
a red cat porter at the Albany, New York train station. Later,
(08:44):
he joined the National Guard unit that would become part
of the Harlem hell Fighters. In May of nineteen eighteen,
Henry Johnson and Needham Roberts, both of them then privates,
were acting as centuries at a lookout post in the
Argon Forest on the Western Front. John Hnson heard the
sound of someone snipping through barbed wire. Concluding that this
was a German advance, he sent Roberts to go for help,
(09:08):
called for help himself, and then lobbed grenades at the
source of the sound. It was indeed a German advance,
and the Germans returned fire with both grenades and bullets.
Roberts turned back to try to help Johnson, and both
men were hit. Roberts was actually hurt so badly that
he was not able to continue fighting, so he passed
(09:28):
grenades to Johnson, and Johnson threw them at the approaching
Germans until he ran out, and then Johnson got his
rifle and he fired upon the advancing German soldiers until
his weapon jammed after he accidentally tried to use an
American clip with a French rifle. At this point, the
German soldiers closed into hand to hand range, and so
Johnson tried to fight them off basically by swinging his
(09:50):
rifle like a club until the butt of it literally splintered.
And Johnson, we should point out, was not a large man.
He was only about five ft four you wait, about
a hundred dirty pounds, and once his rifle was destroyed,
he was struck in the head and knocked down. But
then he saw that the German soldiers were trying to
take the injured Private Roberts prisoner, so Johnson managed to
(10:11):
get to his feet. He pulled out the only weapon
he had left, which was his bolo knife, and he
fought back with that while trying to drag Roberts to safety. Fortunately,
at this point, the sounds of gunfire and grenades and
their calls for help had brought other soldiers to their aid,
so Johnson continued trying to drag Roberts away from the
fighting until he lost consciousness. Fortunately that was when reinforcements
(10:35):
arrived and the German soldiers who were still upright fled.
In the morning, it was revealed that then Private Johnson
had single handedly killed four enemy soldiers and wounded somewhere
between ten and twenty more, all while he was injured
himself with twenty one wounds, sustained in his combat and
refusing to allow his compatriot to be taken captive. So
(10:57):
both men were awarded the lot of Gear, which is
the French military decoration for valor and heroism. This made
Johnson and Roberts the first American privates of any race
to earn this recognition, and Johnson and Roberts were not
the only members of the Harlem Heal fighters to ultimately
be awarded the Quadi gear for their valor. All in all,
(11:18):
a hundred and seventy one individual members of the Harlem
Heal Fighters received the Quadi gear, and the unit as
a whole was awarded one as well for capturing say
Show while advancing ahead of French and other American lines.
The Harlem Heal Fighters were the first to reach the
Rhine after the armistice, and they were commended again and
again for their valor. So basically they performed above and
(11:42):
beyond the call for any combat unit, and especially in
a way that flew in the face of what the
American command was expecting of them. Yeah, I don't think
you could get a much more um, kind of poignant
portrait of heroism. Right. So, roughly eight hundred Harlem Hell
Fighters lost our lives in Europe. About three thousand others
(12:02):
returned home from the war. In February of nineteen nineteen,
they had a welcome home parade in which they marched
up Fifth Avenue in New York and into their home
neighborhood of Harlem. And this parade was in part to
make up for the fact that on their departure from
New York in December of nineteen seventeen, they had not
been permitted to take part in the New York National
Guards farewell Parade through New York City. The New York
(12:25):
National Guard was known as the Rainbow Division because it
included members from twenty seven states, and the reason for
the fifteenth New York Regiment's exclusion was black is not
a color of the Rainbow. On their return, however, the
Harlem health Fighters received a legitimate heroes welcome. Accounts very
wildly about how many people were there for the parade.
(12:46):
You will find news sources that site anywhere from two
hundred thousand people to more than two million. Johnson was
riding in a car for injured veterans, and in spite
of the fact that he had a shattered foot that
was held together with the metal plate, he stood up
to wave at them, and people called him Black Death.
The response from both white and black onlookers at the
(13:07):
parade was so a brilliantly positive that too many it
was a symbol of hope for improved race relations to come.
And this was bolstered by the fact that President Theodore
Roosevelt called Johnson one of the five bravest Americans to
serve in the war. That's high praise, and the army
used his image on recruitment posters and to sell victory
War stamps. I couldn't find a picture of this actual advertisement,
(13:30):
but reportedly what it says signed is Johnson licked a
dozen Germans. How many stamps have you LICKD I looked
for I because yeah, that's some copy right. So all
of this Johnson's fame is a war hero. The overwhelming
tide of support for the returning black veterans, this overall
theme that the war had been fought in a quote
(13:52):
to make the world safe for democracy, gave a lot
of people hope that this signaled a major change in
the social and legal status of African Americans and the
United States. Sadly, this was not to be true, and
we're going to talk about why and how after another
brief word from a sponsor. So, when he was committing
(14:20):
American troops to World War One, Woodrow Wilson very famously
said that quote the world must be made safe for democracy.
We alluded to that just before the break, But when
African American soldiers returned home to find that they were
still the targets of segregation, discrimination, and oppression, it really
seemed like there was an unspoken for white people at
the end of that sentence, hoping to tie the fight
(14:41):
for civil rights to the ideals that had underpinned the
United states very involvement in the war, and the fact
that so many black soldiers had returned as highly decorated heroes,
black civil rights leaders called for action. The idea of
making the world safe for democracy came up again and
again in art, call, speeches, pamphlets, and other materials about
(15:03):
equal rights for black citizens. In May of nineteen nineteen,
for example, W. E. B. D. Boys wrote quote, returning soldiers,
we return, we return from fighting. We return fighting make
way for democracy. We saved it in France, and by
the Great Jehovah, we will save it in the United
States of America. Or know the reason why. But this
(15:26):
is not the war that winds up being referenced in
terms of how it affected civil rights. That distinction always,
as we've said, goes to World War Two. The biggest
reason for this is that it's much easier to frame
World War Two as a more positive story. Following World
War Two, returning black veterans added their voices to a
growing grass grassroots movement all over the nation, which coalesced
(15:47):
into what we know is the civil rights movement today.
And although there was definitely a violent backlash and lots
of resistance. That was a hallmark tow part of this movement.
It did eventually lead to civil rights legislation that was
meant to help put Black Americans on more equal footing.
That's an oversimplified way to look at World War two,
(16:08):
but no amount of oversimplification can put the years following
World War One into such a positive light. World War
One ended on November eleventh of nineteen eighteen. The following summer,
violence broke out all over the United States, driven by
a number of social and economic factors. One was a
backlash against advocacy for equal treatment of African Americans, especially
(16:31):
as others began to view this movement as militant. But
also in play was the return of soldiers who had
fought in the war, colliding with what's known as the
Great Migration. So in the Great Migration, which peaked between
nineteen fourteen and nineteen twenty, huge numbers of African Americans
living in the South moved north. Many of them were
(16:51):
fleeing poverty and social and political oppression. People who had
been living as sharecroppers in the South moved north to
get industrial jobs, many of which were tied to the
war effort in the hope of getting better incomes and
more freedom. So this dramatically shifted the racial landscape and
many northern cities. This also meant that many white veterans
(17:13):
in the North returned home to find that their industrial
jobs had been filled by black workers who had moved
up from the South. Returning soldiers of all races and
ethnicities wound up in competition for a shrinking supply of jobs.
As a result of these and many other factors, the
summer of nineteen nineteen was so violent and so deadly
that it came to be known as Red Summer. Eighty
(17:35):
three people are known to have been lynched in nineteen nineteen,
up from sixty four in nineteen eighteen who Klex Klan
activity also spread, especially in the South, and then there
were what is often described as race riots, which broke
out in Washington, d c. Chicago, Omaha, Knoxville, and many
other cities. However, as we discussed in our episode on
(17:59):
the Tulsa race it and Black Wall Street, the term
race riot is often a misnomer because it suggests racial
violence in which the races involved are equal aggressors. It
was a misnomer during the destruction of Black Wall Street
in Tulsa, and it was a misnomer. During Red Summer,
overwhelmingly the instigators in Red Summer were white citizens, and
(18:19):
overwhelmingly Black people, along with their homes, businesses, and entire neighborhoods,
were the victims. One of the most dramatic moments in
Red Summer took place that July when a riot broke
out in Chicago after a black teenager drowned. He had
been using a customarily whites only beach and people did
not like that and they stoned him, so he drowned
(18:40):
after being stoned. As a result of this particular riot,
almost forty people were killed, five hundred were injured, and
about a thousand Black families were left homeless after a
white mob burned their homes down. The last major event
in Red Summer actually took place in October and he
lay in Arkansas, black sharecroppers, attempting to organize themselves to
(19:03):
advocate for better treatment were massacred by a white mob.
Somewhere between one hundred and two hundred Black sharecroppers were killed.
In the aftermath, many more black share croppers were arrested
and jailed. Many were put on trial, and some were
sentenced to death by all white juries even though they
had actually been the victims and not the instigators. So
(19:26):
that's why, even though World War One inspired a ground
swell of organized advocacy for equal rights for black citizens,
it doesn't come to the forefront very often. And it's
also not a particularly good place to end this episode,
So we are going to turn back to the story
of Henry Johnson for a moment. So there's widespread belief
that Johnson received no disability compensation from the government because
(19:49):
of the clerical error in his discharged papers, and that
he died in obscure poverty. So while the last part
of that is actually sadly mostly true, the first part
does not hold up a the examination of the records.
News articles and military records from the time indicate that
Johnson was a patient at Walter Reed Hospital, that he
received a disability statement stipend of about ninety dollars a month,
(20:12):
which would not have been a lot of money, but
was there. Most of this misinformation stems from the fact
that Herman Johnson, who served with a Tuskeye Airmen, seems
to have mistakenly genuinely believed that Henry Johnson was his father.
He gave interviews about his father's life that were based
on his own knowledge, which was actually incomplete, and Johnson
(20:35):
did die at a sadly young age of myocarditis, after
having had a series of complications with the many injuries
he sustained in combat, along with tuberculosis. He was buried
in Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors on July five.
The sight of his grave was actually lost until two
thousand two. In the intervening years, his family had believed
(20:58):
that he was actually buried in an anonymous grave in Albany,
in part because they had lost touch with him, and
in part because the Army made a clerical error in
the name of who was buried in the grave. Henry
Johnson was posthumously awarded a Purple Heart, which is for
soldiers who were wounded or killed in action in it
didn't actually exist yet when he was wounded. In two
(21:20):
thousand three, after the location of his grave was found,
he was also awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, and he
was posthumously promoted to sergeant after finding a memo from
General John J. Pershing describing Johnson's velorous deeds in a database.
Senator Charles Schumer of New York started a petition to
have imposthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. Sergeant Henry Johnson
(21:43):
was awarded the Medal of Honor on June two. It
was accepted on his behalf by Command Sergeant Major Lewis
Wilson of the New York National Guarden. His official citation
ends quote Private Johnson's extraordinary heroism and selflessness above and
beyond the call of duty are in keeping with the
highest traditions of military service, and reflect great credit upon himself,
(22:05):
his unit, and the United States Army. And there's also
a cool graphic novel about the whole thing. I think
it is probably cool. It's by Max Brooks, who has
done a lot of other graphic novels, some of them
not historically related at all. I did check it out
from the library. I have not yet had time to
read it before recording this episode, but it looks really good. Ah,
(22:29):
so that is it is. Well, it's kind of a
meandering story through. I think I might have said this
in the show before. We have three categories of sad episodes, right,
we have the ones that we know we're going to
be sad, and then we get into it and we
realize it's a lot sadder than we thought. And then
we have the ones that we know we're gonna be
really sad, but we are doing them because we think
(22:50):
it's important or maybe a lot of people have asked
us to do it. And then we have the ones
that are like today, which is that I picked something
because it sounds cool, and then I get into it
and I go, oh, this is this is hurting me.
So I had picked the Harlem hell Fighters based on
probably a uh like a blog post or a tumbler
post or something somewhere that was about this really amazing
(23:13):
all black fighting regiment in World War One and how
great they were and how much valor and bravery they
exhibited and how awesome. And I was like, well, yeah,
I want to talk about those guys. And then I
was like, oh, dear, this sad, Oh sad things are happening.
YEA history is full of those surprise little pop up.
(23:38):
Thank you so much for joining us today for this
Saturday classic. If you have heard any kind of email
address or maybe a Facebook you are l during the
course of the episode that might be obsolete. It might
be doubly obsolete because we have changed our email address again.
You can now reach us at history podcast at i
heart radio dot com, and we're all over social media
at missed in History and you can subscribe to our
(24:00):
show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the I heart Radio app,
and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff you Missed
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For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i
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