Harlem Hellfighters 

   Gen. John Pershing owed his reputation - in part - to the 369th Infantry Regiment, a unit he regarded as "inferior" and lacking in "civic and professional conscience." 

   It was this month, 1918, when the 369th became the first American unit to reach the front. In the Meuse-Argonne offensive, Germans unleashed gun fire at American trenches. Hot shrapnel from shells fell like rain. Enemy biplanes flew overhead. The ground shuddered from incoming artillery. 

   Two years earlier, Harlem civic leaders lobbied to let black men prove themselves as soldiers. During their training in South Carolina, they experienced real Jim Crow law and racial slurs, not today's political jargon. 

   When the U.S. entered WWI in 1917, these men, mostly from New York, became the 369th and were sent to France. They were forbidden from associating with white troops. Their duties included cooking and digging latrines. 

   In spring 1918, French and British armies were depleted. Col. Hayward, their white officer, urged Pershing to send the 369th, which he did while expecting nothing to come of it. It would be a month before other Americans reached the front. 

   Though lightly armed with French rifles, and outnumbered, they repelled the Germans. Their most significant triumph came during the last major offensive on September 30. They took out German machine gunners and American forces launched the attacks that ended the war. 

   France gave the entire unit the Croix de Guerre for bravery, possibly the first U.S. regiment to be so honored. They were the longest serving front-line combat unit in the war - 191 days in theater. The unit never surrendered a trench, earning the nickname "Hellfighters." 

   The men returned home to face bigotry and prejudice, despite a victory parade down Fifth Avenue. If today's activists were accusing whites then, they would have had a case. 

Smithsonian