Harlem Hellfighters are finally getting their due

For most of her life, Debra Willett had a vague idea about who her grandfather was. She knew he had fought in France in World War I at some point.

But she didn't grasp the importance of what her grandfather, who died in 1956, had accomplished until she began doing some genealogy research in 1998.

Sgt. Leander Willett served with the distinguished 369th Infantry Regiment, commonly known as the Harlem Hellfighters, the most celebrated regiment of Black soldiers during World War I. Unlike many Black soldiers who were limited to manual labor and custodial duties, the Harlem Hellfighters made it to the front lines. They were celebrated for their bravery, helping to change the perception of Black soldiers as inferior.

As time passed, however, the Hellfighters, who numbered in the thousands, were largely forgotten. Somehow, they did not maintain the same historical prestige as the Tuskegee Airmen, the country's first Black aviation unit, or the Montford Point Marines, the first Black marines, though the Harlem Hellfighters preceded both groups.

Although they returned home to cheers after the war, the Hellfighters, their descendants say, carried the scars of brutal combat and, once the cheering had stopped, the disappointment of remaining second-class citizens, subjected to racism and discrimination, in the very country they had served and defended.

"As I understand from my aunt and my father he never ever spoke about World War I," said Willett, 63, who lives in Oyster Bay on Long Island, N.Y. "My father thinks that the reason he didn't speak about it was the fact that he was bayoneted and gassed and it left such a horrible impression upon him."

She added that "because he was African American, this was really nothing spoken about or celebrated."

Until now. The Harlem Hellfighters, largely overlooked for more than a century, will be awarded a Congressional Gold Medal. The U.S. Senate recently passed legislation to give them the award, and President Joe Biden signed it Wednesday.

"My vision is that the people in America should know about the Harlem Hellfighters as well as they know about the Tuskegee Airmen," said Rep. Thomas Suozzi, D-N.Y., who sponsored the medal legislation along with Rep. Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y.

Recently, the descendants of the Harlem Hellfighters, military veterans and elected officials gathered at the 369th Regiment Armory in Harlem to celebrate the passing of the bill. Suozzi, Espaillat, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York and others made endearing speeches about the resilience of the Hellfighters.

In 1959, a diligent and curious soldier discovered a room in the armory where artifacts of the Hellfighters, including photographs, had been abandoned. The items were cleaned and later displayed, sparking a sort of rediscovery of the once-famous unit.

But even descendants, like Willett, remained unaware of the full scope of the Hellfighters' achievements.

The Harlem Hellfighters were born out of the 15th Infantry Regiment of the New York National Guard in 1916. When the United States entered into World War I, the unit became the 369th Regiment.

During that time period, white military leaders, still under the influence of pervasive racist beliefs, thought Black soldiers would not fare well on the battlefield but could be useful abroad in other ways, so the unit was sent to South Carolina to train.

While stationed there, the soldiers — many of them strangers to the overt racism of the South — were barraged with racial slurs from their white peers and local citizens. Their commander told them to respond to threats with "fortitude and without retaliation."

"In the North, things were somewhat better than they were in the South," said Dr. Krewasky Salter, a historian and museum director who worked with Suozzi's team to make sure the bill was historically accurate. "So when they came down South they weren't necessarily willing to accept what they were receiving."

When the soldiers arrived in Europe, they were relegated to building forts and roads, digging ditches, and doing other menial jobs. Their leader, Cmdr. William Hayward, repeatedly requested that they serve on the battlefield instead.

Since American white soldiers were unwilling to fight alongside the Hellfighters, the Black soldiers were eventually assigned to the 16th Division of the French Army.

The Hellfighters spent 191 days in combat, which is believed to be longer than any other U.S. unit in the war, according to multiple accounts. Henry Johnson and Needham Roberts were the first Americans, Black or white, to receive the Croix de Guerre, a French award given to those who show immense acts of heroism in battle.