The Harlem Hell Fighters was the nickname of the all-Black 369th Infantry Regiment deployed to France in World War I. Members of the Black community in New York City’s Harlem district had long advocated for the creation of a homegrown military unit, but White politicians blocked several attempts at establishing such a body. On June 2, 1913, a bill authorizing an Black National Guard regiment finally passed the New York state legislature. This military unit were the Black National Guard soldiers of New York’s 15th Infantry Regiment. The governor appointed his former campaign manager William Hayward, a White lawyer, as commander of the unit. These African American soldiers eventually became a highly-decorated infantry regiment in World War I.
Hayward incorporated White officers, but he recognized the importance of incorporating African American soldiers into the unit’s officer corps. The majority of the enlistees actually came from Harlem, which was home to 50,000 of Manhattan’s 60,000 African-Americans in the 1910s. Others came from Brooklyn, towns up the Hudson River, and New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania. Some were teens, some in their mid-40s. Some were porters, doormen, or elevator operators, some teachers, night watchmen or mailmen. Their motives included adventure, patriotism and pride. “To be somebody you had to belong to the 15th Infantry,” wrote enlistee Arthur P. Davis of Harlem. What to do with Black soldiers generally once they were trained bedeviled leadership.
The American Expeditionary Force (AEF), commander General John J. Pershing and others refused to integrate the armed services. The commander, avoided placing the 369th Infantry or other Black units on the front lines, reflecting the military leadership’s view that Blacks could not be effective combat soldiers. Pershing’s attitudes toward Black troops were complicated. He served with the all-Black 10th Cavalry (the Buffalo Soldiers) in 1895, from whence he got his nickname “Black Jack,” Prior to their deployment to Europe, they were denied permission to take part in the farewell parade for the Army's 42nd Division, known as the "Rainbow Division", a collection of National Guard units. Hayward was told "Black is not a color of the rainbow." It was a sign of the lack of acceptance, prejudice and discrimination Blacks faced in the military and the country at large. Their patriotism, intelligence and courage were questioned.
When the unit arrived in France in December 1917, they expected to conduct combat training and enter the trenches of the Western Front right away. They could not have been more wrong. The Black troops were ordered to unload supply ships at the docks for their first months in France, joining the mass of supply troops known as “stevedores”. These troops performed essential duties for the American Expeditionary Force, building roads, bridges and trenches in support of the front-line battles. Black men in the U.S military served in segregated regiments and were often relegated to support duties such as digging trenches, transporting supplies, cleaning latrines, and burying the dead.
But the 15th Infantry Regiment soldiers had not signed up for labor. They were committed to fighting the Germans and winning the war. Colonel Hayward argued his case in a letter to Army Gen. John J. Pershing, outlining the regiment’s mobilization and training, and followed up immediately with a personal visit to Pershing’s headquarters. Unlike many White officers serving in the Black regiments, Colonel Hayward, respected his troops, dedicated himself to their well-being, and leveraged his political connections to secure support from New Yorkers. The French were in need of troops. Col. Hayward wrote to a friend: "Our great American general simply put the Black orphan in a basket, set it on the doorstep of the French, pulled the bell, and went away." Though the American Army didn't want Black soldiers fighting alongside White ones, the French, in desperate need of soldiers at the time, welcomed their help.
Colonel Hayward would bring with him the regiment’s most formidable weapon in swaying opinion: the regimental band, lauded as one of the finest in the entire Expeditionary Force. While the regiment literally laid the tracks for the arrival of the 2 million troops deploying to France, the regimental band toured the region, performing for French and American audiences at rest centers and hospitals. James Reese Europe was tapped to lead the regimental marching band. Reese joined the regiment as a lieutenant and convinced many established Black musicians to sign up. Noble Sissle served as his sergeant and lead vocalist. The military band would frequently perform a French march, followed by traditional band scores such as John Philip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever.”
After some three months of labor constructing nearby railways to move supplies forward, the regiment’s soldiers learned that they had orders to join the French 16th Division for three weeks of combat training. They also learned they had a new regimental number as the now-renamed 369th Infantry Regiment. Not that it mattered much to the soldiers; they still carried their old nickname from New York, the "Harlem Rattlers". They called themselves Harlem’s Rattlers, after the snake on the Revolutionary War-era Gadsden flag. This unit became known as the famed “Black Rattlers,” or the “Men of Bronze”, given to the regiment by the French after they had witnessed their fearlessness and gallantry during battle in the trenches. The Black troops would see combat, but alongside French forces, who were already accustomed to the many races and ethnicities already serving in the ranks of their colonial troops.
The French had fully integrated African colonial troops into their army for decades, so the men of the 369th found greater acceptance in a foreign army than they had in their own. After a period of French-language and tactics training and intense drilling with the French Lebel rifle, the 369th was ordered to the front in the Champagne region, on the western edge of the Argonne Forest. By summer, they were fighting in the Champagne-Marne Defensive and the Aisne-Marne Offensive. In this post the Hell Fighters saw much action, fighting in the Second Battle of the Marne, as well as the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, which began on Sept. 26, 1918. As the 369th advanced, capturing towns and a key railroad junction, the losses mounted. As the Germans spring offensive hammered the Allied lines, the 369th developed a fearsome reputation among its enemies.
In a matter of days, these advances cost the regiment 851 men, and shortly after they were relieved from the front lines. In recognition of their bravery during the offensive, 171 officers and men received medals and the entire regiment received the Croix de Guerre from France. The Germans fighting against them called the 369th Infantry men "Hollenkampfer", German for hell fighter. This is how they received the nickname "Harlem Hell Fighters". Undermining the racist contention that Black men lacked courage, they fought and won many battles. They also suffered the most losses of any American regiment, with fifteen hundred casualties. But, they never lost a foot of ground or had any man taken prisoner. During World War I, the Harlem Hell Fighters spent 191 days in the front-line trenches, spending more time in continuous combat than any other American unit of that size.
The 369th was the first Black regiment to gain notoriety for its fighting skills when Henry Johnson and Needham Roberts successfully defeated a German assault. On May 15, 1918, Pvt. Henry Johnson and Pvt. Needham Roberts of the 369th were on sentry duty when their post was attacked by a German patrol. The two men fought off as many as two dozen Germans in brutal hand-to-hand combat. Johnson fought off German soldiers, killing several, while sustaining 21 wounds in the engagement, and saved his fellow soldier Roberts from capture in northern France. For his valiant and brave actions during World War I, Private Henry Johnson became the first American to receive the Criox de Guerre, the French highest military decoration. The extraordinary courage of the Harlem Hell Fighters earned them fame in Europe and America, as newspapers recounted their remarkable feats.
The achievements of the 369th Infantry Regiment had been heralded in the American press. At the end of the war the 369th returned to New York City and were greeted as returning heroes. On February 17th 1919, they paraded through the city as every race turned out in huge numbers to cheer as 3,000 Harlem Hell Fighters proudly marched up Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue to the music of their renowned regimental jazz bandleader, James Reese Europe. This day became an unofficial holiday of sorts for all of Harlem. Many African American school children were dismissed from school so that they could attend the parade. With the addition of many adults there were thousands of people that lined the streets to see the 369th Regiment. Thousands gathered along 5th Avenue and 42nd Street, outside the New York Public Library, welcoming home the brave soldiers.
But, when the parade ended, they were still confronted by Jim Crow racism in the South and racial segregation in the North. They returned to a country that was soon gripped by the race riots of 1919, known as the "Red Summer of 1919", coined by James Weldon Johnson. That summer saw violent attacks including race riots, mob violence and lynchings, initiated by white servicemen against Black veterans in many cases. The division was even featured prominently on the cover of the Sunday New York Times. But despite this celebration, little to nothing changed in their day-to-day lives. It would take another world war, and decades of civil rights activism before the hopes of these African American doughboys would start to be realized. With the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, however, the courage and service of Black patriots like the Harlem Hell Fighters is once again being recognized and celebrated.