50books_poc | The Harlem Hellfighters (Reply)

4. Walter Dean Myers, The Harlem Hellfighters: When Pride Met Courage

The 369th Infantry Regiment was a black WWI regiment whose mere existence was so troublesome to the United States Army, that the Army signed the 369th over to French command for the duration of the war. Even without adequate training, even having to fight with unfamiliar weapons under the command of officers they couldn't understand, the 369th performed valiantly, never giving up ground to the Germans and never allowing any of their men to be taken prisoner. This volume is written for kids, but it isn't a lightweight gloss on the material: it runs 150 pages, and Myers uses the space well.

American participation in WWI required a draft, and for northern whites to submit to a draft, the draft would have to include blacks as well. Northern blacks saw military service as an opportunity to equalize their position in society, and thus would not tolerate being treated as anything other than a proper military combat unit. Southern whites were unwilling to tolerate anything that might rouse southern blacks into demanding equality -- and training black men to use weapons, then allowing these men to distinguish themselves in battle, was exactly the sort of thing that southern whites were afraid of.

Basic training, conducted in Spartanburg, South Carolina, was a disaster for everyone who had hoped to have black regiments AND leave the status quo intact, and that included the Army command itself. Black soldiers from the north refused to bow to Southern racism. They entered hotel lobbies through the front door, refused to yield the sidewalk to white townspeople, and when a rumor went around that a lynching was imminent, grabbed their guns and headed into town to stop it. White soldiers stationed at Spartanburg retaliated against the white townspeople for the insults given to their black brethren; they were outraged that any soldier would be shown the disrespect showed to the black soldiers. Altercations between townspeople and soldiers were frequent, and white officers kept having to rush into town to break up yet another incipient mob scene. After a mere two weeks, the Army pulled the black regiment out of basic training, and decided to send them to war untrained.

In France, the racial tensions that surrounded the 369th were less volatile, but still troublesome to U.S. military command. Initially, the Army tried to use the 369th as laborers, but the soldiers of the 369th were unwilling to sit out the war unloading ships in harbor. Finally, U.S. command offered the 369th to the French -- the French army had been decimated by long years of war, they badly needed the extra soldiers, and they did not have the aversion to letting black soldiers serve in combat that the U.S. army had. The 369th was issued French weapons, placed under French command, and sent to the front.

It should have been a disaster. The 369th hadn't been fully trained; they were under command of officers who spoke a language they couldn't understand; they were required to use weapons they had no experience with. Throughout their time on the front, their replacement soldiers came to them untrained -- the new recruits' only qualifications for joining the 369th was that they were black, and thus the U.S. Army had no other idea of what to do with them. While the French command was less racist than U.S. command, they were racist, and sometimes caved to U.S. pressure to not allow black soldiers and officers the full liberties that white soldiers and officers were allowed. Yet still the 369th distinguished themselves, earning themselves the name of "The Harlem Hellfighters," the respect of the French soldiers and populace, and French military honors.

Unfortunately, when the war ended, the honor that the 369th had earned in combat under the French command was ignored by the U.S. Army and american society at large. While waiting to be shipped home again, the 369th was expected to work as common laborers while white troops recuperated from battle. The scarcity of jobs in the post-war U.S. for returning soldiers, as well as the lack of white respect for the actions of black soldiers during the war, contributed to the Red Summer of 1919.

I came to this book by way of Roll of Thunder, in which there is a passing statement that one of Cassie's uncles "died during the War." I had a dim memory that the U.S. Army didn't even begin to pull its shit together with respect to black soldiers until after WWII, which led me to chase down what the story with Cassie's uncle might have been. A bit of poking around led me to the Harlem Hellfighters, and a lot more poking led me to this book, which is the only one I could find that was by an author of color.

A look at Myers' bibliography confirms that almost everyone who has written about the Hellfighters is white. The single black author on the list (so far as I can determine) is Emmett J. Scott, author Scott's Official History of the American Negro in the World War, published in 1919. Myers describes Scott as a segregationist who was retained by the military as an advisor on colored affairs, with the implication that he was useful to the Department of Defense as a man who would try to persuade the soldiers to abide by the status quo. The men of the 369th, Myers says, did not have much respect for Scott.

Another resource about the Hellfighters from the POV of a person of color is the artwork and diaries of Horace Pippin, one of the soldiers of the 369th.

Dog Fight Over the Trenches, by Horace Pippin
“I will say this much, I say no man can do it again. He may have the will but his body cannot stand it. I could tell a new man every time I seen him, for he would duck every time a shell came over. He would be ducking all day long until he would get used to it.”