The Harlem Hellfighters | History
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00 The Harlem Hellfighters was a regiment of New York National Guardsmen in the First World War.
00:07 They were set up to fail by their own government.
00:09 They were humiliated, degraded, eventually given to the French Army as a throwaway.
00:14 And they ended up coming home as one of the most decorated units in the entire U.S. Army.
00:19 The Harlem Hellfighters are one of the most important regiments in American history.
00:25 In World War I, they helped to establish to the entire world the power of black soldiers in the military.
00:32 It was very difficult at that time for African Americans to get into the United States military
00:37 because there was this perception that African Americans would not do well in battle.
00:42 They had to overcome the prejudice of their own countrymen and yet also perform ably on the battlefield.
00:48 Like so many units of African American descent, when they go overseas, they're not sure what they're going to do.
00:54 Are they going to fight as infantry? Or are they going to be stevedores and load ships?
01:00 Are they going to be labor units and cut wood?
01:03 And so they're committed to labor duty. They're unloading ships, building latrines, those type of support services.
01:10 And as you can imagine, these men have been trained and they're willing to fight, they're ready to fight, and this is stressful for them.
01:16 They were finally given to the French Army, which in a way was an even greater insult
01:20 because in the First World War, when the United States entered, General Pershing, the commanding officer,
01:25 was very clear that American forces would not be fed piecemeal into the French and British Army
01:31 because the French and British wanted reinforcements, and Pershing said, "Absolutely not.
01:35 When Americans join this war, they will fight as an American force under an American flag led by an American general.
01:43 Dot, dot, dot, except for the black guys. You can have them."
01:47 [♪♪]
01:51 [explosion]
01:54 [♪♪]
02:01 Henry Johnson is perhaps one of the most remarkable black military heroes in U.S. history.
02:07 And he found himself in no man's land with Private Needham Roberts manning a listening post.
02:13 And Needham Roberts hears, "Click, click, click."
02:19 He realizes somebody's cutting the wire. It's potentially a German raid.
02:24 [♪♪]
02:27 And so Roberts is passing him grenades and they line up these grenades, and the Germans actually do come across the lines.
02:33 Roberts is hurt, and now Henry Johnson is left to defend their position and to stave off this attack.
02:40 And then he makes the mistake of jamming a French cartridge into his American gun and it no longer will work,
02:45 and the Germans are on top of it.
02:47 He then used his rifle like a club, and then he ended up fighting with a knife against the Kaiser's best and turned them.
02:55 He's wounded in the fray. He's struck, for example, in the foot and has a debilitating injury as a result.
03:01 And he fights them off, he says, for what seemed like an hour.
03:04 The Germans ran shrieking into the night, all because of one man.
03:08 [♪♪]
03:12 It's not until the next morning that people realize what a tremendous act this was.
03:17 They discover four bodies of dead German soldiers,
03:21 and they also realize from the equipment and other things that are left behind that as many as 30 may have been involved in this altercation.
03:28 As soon as he drove off those Germans, the French awarded him with the Croix de Guerre, a great honor.
03:35 Unfortunately, it took about 75 years for the U.S. government to give him the Legion of Merit.
03:41 Had he been white, he would have walked out of that war with the Medal of Honor.
03:46 [♪♪]
03:53 What was so shocking to me when I began to research the story of the Hellfighters
03:57 was that after they had performed so magnificently in combat,
04:00 the United States government actually sent a memorandum to the French government,
04:05 essentially implementing Jim Crow, essentially saying,
04:08 "Don't give them some notion that they are equals,
04:11 because we don't want them taking that notion back to the United States and demanding equality."
04:17 When he comes back to the United States, he's not awarded the Purple Heart.
04:20 There's no notation in his military record of his injury.
04:24 He winds up not being able to work because of this injury.
04:27 He doesn't get any kind of assistance from the Army or from the government as a result,
04:31 and he ends up dying a 1929 penniless.
04:34 So it again shows the paradox.
04:36 Here's this great story of valor and of courage on the part of this soldier,
04:40 and ultimately he comes back to a nation that doesn't honor that sacrifice.
04:44 We tend to think we all know American history so well
04:47 that the story of the Harlem Hellfighters should be one of the first stories told.
04:53 It wasn't about killing other people.
04:55 It was about being Americans and serving their country well.
04:59 That was the inclination of the Harlem Hellfighters.
05:03 When you are African American in 1917, democracy is armor.
05:10 Democracy is a weapon.
05:12 And to fight for a war to make the world safe for democracy
05:16 was something more than just some ethereal crusade for the Hellfighters.
05:20 It had concrete results.
05:22 They were fighting for the rights to be a citizen of the country that they were born in.
05:29 [♪♪]
05:33 [♪♪]
05:37 [♪♪]
05:40 [BLANK_AUDIO]