The Harlem Hellfighters Read online

  The Anatomy of a Race Riot

  Race riots are often caused by small, seemingly insignificant events, such as a rumor that someone was attacked or was threatened by another group. Sometimes an incident involving a personal dispute between two people can escalate into a general riot. In Chicago a black youth swimming in a pool was the target of stones thrown by one or more white youths. The black, not a good swimmer, drowned. In the ensuing riot thirty-eight people were killed, fifteen whites and twenty-three blacks. Five hundred people were injured. In Washington, D.C., a riot left 40 dead and 150 wounded. Many black men were lynched that year. Some of them were veterans of the war still in their uniforms. There were so many deaths and so much bloodshed during the hot months of 1919 that it was called Red Summer.

  Riots of Red Summer

  What they found upon their return from the war was disappointing to the black men who had fought for their country, including the men of the 369th, but they had had experiences that would change their lives forever. In many ways the war changed all of black America. The war, and the participation of the Harlem Hellfighters against a skilled and determined enemy, demonstrated that courage and bravery and heroism knew no color lines. They were all Americans.

  James Europe sheet music

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  HEROES AND MEN

  The story of the Harlem Hellfighters is not simply one of victory in a war. Indeed, it is not even one of unexpected courage, amazing feats, or a disregard for danger. The men suffered when one would have expected them to suffer, they fell wounded when hit by shrapnel or bullets, and many of them died. But it is the story of men who acted as men, and who gave good accounts of themselves when so many people thought, even hoped, that they would fail.

  When the soldiers of the 15th New York National Guard boarded the ships that would take them to France, they took with them the hopes and dreams of an entire people. They were in the prayers of black congregations throughout the nation each Sunday morning, and in the thoughts and dreams of thousands of black families.

  Those who died in the trenches and amid the barbed wire did so upholding the dignity of their race and of their country. They had fought for their country, and they had proved, beyond doubt, that they had a right to fight. Those who returned to march through the streets of New York, who paraded uptown past the cheering Harlem crowds, did so as heroes. They had helped to make the world safe for democracy and had held the banner of black dignity high enough for all the world to see.

  Many had hoped their sacrifices would make a change in how America saw them. They had hoped that the derogatory terms so casually tossed at them by bigots would be discarded once the first man of them went over the top. In this effort, even the Harlem Hellfighters were not successful.

  But the men who rose from those trenches after hours of shelling, who climbed the hills and waded through the mud, who rushed across no-man’s-land with bayonets pointed at the enemy, would forever be heroes to their community, and to all Americans who understood what they had accomplished.

  Carrying the spoils of war

  SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Badger, Reid. A Life in Ragtime: A Biography of James Reese Europe. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

  Barbeau, Arthur E., and Florette Henri. The Unknown Soldiers: African American Troops in World War I. New York: Da Capo Press, 1996.

  Center of Military History. United States Army in the World War, Volume 3. Washington: Center of Military History, 1989.

  Harris, Steven L. Harlem’s Hell Fighters: The African-American 369th Infantry in World War I. Washington: Brassey’s, Inc., 2003.

  Little, Arthur W. From Harlem to the Rhine: The Story of New York’s Colored Volunteers. New York: Covici, Friede, 1936.

  A Pictorial History of the Negro in the Great World War, 1917–1918. New York: Toussaint Pictorial Company, Inc., 1931.

  Scott, Emmett Jay. Scott’s Official History of the American Negro in the World War. Chicago: Homewood, 1919.

  Stein, Judith. I Tell My Heart: The Art of Horace Pippin. New York: Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 1993.

  On the Web

  U.S. National Archives & Records Administration (NARA): http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/369th-infantry/

  Interview: Ann and Jeni Estill

  About the Authors

  Five-time Coretta Scott King Award winner WALTER DEAN MYERS is the author of NOW IS YOUR TIME!: The African-American Struggle for Freedom; I’VE SEEN THE PROMISED LAND: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; MALCOLM X: A Fire Burning Brightly; and PATROL: An American Soldier in Vietnam, a Jane Addams Children’s Book Award winner. His young adult novels include AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MY DEAD BROTHER; MONSTER, the first winner of the Michael L. Printz Award; and SHOOTER, a Children’s Book Sense Summer Pick. Mr. Myers lives in Jersey City, New Jersey. Visit him online at www.walterdeanmyersbooks.com.

  Oscar nominee BILL MILES has produced and directed numerous award-winning documentaries dedicated to African American history and achievement, including I Remember Harlem and The Different Drummer: Blacks in the Military. He has served as the official historian of the 369th Regiment Armory in Harlem. Mr. Miles lives in New York City.

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  Credits

  Jacket photos from the collection of Walter Dean Myers

  Jacket design by Carla Weise

  Jacket © 2006 by HarperCollins Publishers

  Copyright

  THE HARLEM HELLFIGHTERS: When Pride Met Courage. Copyright © 2006 by Walter Dean Myers and Bill Miles. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  EPub © Edition NOVEMBER 2008 ISBN: 9780061974991

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