Henry Johnson
Henry Johnson was a US soldier who performed heroically in the service of the first African American unit of the US Army during the First World War. He was born in 1892, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and moved to Albany, New York, during his early teenage years, where he worked as a redcap porter at the Albany Union Station on Broadway.
When the United States entered the First World War, Johnson enlisted in the all-black New York National Guard 15th Infantry Regiment, which when fully mustered was redesignated the 369th Infantry Regiment. When the unit was deployed to France, it was assigned to the 93rd Infantry Division. General John J Pershing assigned the 369th Infantry Regiment to the 161st Division of the French Army. The black soldiers of which Johnson’s unit, commanded by mostly white officers, suffered considerable racist harassment from white soldiers and so the move was arguably made to minimise the tensions within the unit. In contrast to the American forces, the French Army was happy to accept the unit. Its arrival in France was delayed on a number of occasions (including transport delays and weather) but it deployed at the front eventually and more than made up for its delay.
In early 1918, Johnson’s regiment was assigned to the Argonne Forest, in the Champagne region of France, to a position known as “Outpost 20”. They were issued with French rifles and helmets. On the night of May 14, 1918, a large German raiding party – made up of as many as twenty-four men – attacked Johnson’s position. With supreme heroism and courage, Johnson single-handedly used grenades, his rifle butt, a knife and his fists to repulse the enemy, thereby saving his comrade Needham Roberts from capture and saving the lives of his fellow comrades. By the end of it he had twenty-one wounds and had earned the epithet “Black Death” from his fellow soldiers: not a term of racist abuse, but a recognition of his military prowess.
Johnson’s heroic actions received attention from the press back in the United States. Having been promoted to Sergeant, Johnson took part in a victory parade on Fifth Avenue in New York in early 1919. He then took part in a number of lecture tours. In one lecture, he ruffled feathers by revealing the abuse which black soldiers had suffered during service in the war, explaining how white soldiers had often refused to enter trenches with black soldiers. A warrant was later issued for his arrest for wearing his uniform beyond the date of his commission and his engagements for lectures quickly came to an end. Records show Johnson spent the final years of his life as registered with a “permanent and total disability” resulting from contracting tuberculosis. He died in Washington DC on July 1, 1929 and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, where he still lies today.
In 2015, President Barack Obama presented a serving sergeant of the New York National Guard with a posthumous Medal of Honor for Johnson. Johnson had no surviving next of kin relatives who were able to accept the award on his behalf.