The Harlem Hellfighters

The story of the Harlem Hellfighters (aka 369th Infantry Regiment) is one of the most epic accounts of heroism in wartime that doesn’t get talked about in U.S. history books.

In the spring of 1918, two U.S. soldiers fighting on the Western Front successfully took on about 24 German forces in an early morning raid. Using knives, rifles, and ultimately grenades, Needham Roberts and Henry Johnson chased off the German troops — they became the first U.S. citizens to be awarded the French Croix de Guerre. Roberts and Johnson were members of the Harlem Hellfighters, a much-lauded regiment that spent more days (191) in the trenches than any other American unit.

The French called this group, made up of African Americans who mainly came from Harlem, the “Men of Bronze” because of their heroism in line of fire. They were one of the first all-black units from the U.S. to have black officers as well as enlisted troops, but even as they were praised — you can see the image of Abraham Lincoln overlooking the 369th Infantry Regiment in combat from a World War I poster as an example — they also experienced racism. While training in the state of South Carolina before entering combat, white people constantly hurled racist slurs at these soldiers, who learned to endure this treatment without retaliation.

On European soil, the Harlem Hellfighters (the name might have been given to them by the American press — you can see a photo of some of them in the second slide) became extremely popular among the French. In fact, a number of the regiment were jazz musicians, and helped spread this musical genre overseas. And once home, the former Harlem Hellfighter Noble Sissle composed a musical called _Shuffle Along_, which became one of the Harlem Renaissance’s most important works.

The Harlem Hellfighters lost more men in World War I than any other U.S. unit: 1,500 casualties.