Needham Roberts were on sentry duty when a squad of Germans began firing at them. He fought in the Argonne Forest and was the first American soldier to earn France's highest military honor – the Croix de Guerre. Henry Johnson (section 25, site 64) was also a member of the 369th. In 1914, for example, Poles recorded a batting average of. Although a combat veteran with five battle stars and the Purple Heart, Poles was often referred to as "the black Ty Cobb." His claim to fame came in baseball he was considered the finest player in the Negro leagues in the early 1900s. Among the soldiers was 30-year-old Spottswood Poles (section 42, site 2324). The unit stayed in the trenches for 191 days, the longest front-line service of any American regiment. The 369th Infantry, known as the Harlem Hellfighters, joined the French 4th Army at the front. The first African-American combat troops arrived in France in December 1917. His memorial service was conducted in the Memorial Amphitheater with more than 5,000 people present. He died in 1922, while serving as military attache in Liberia. Young was not reinstated until a few days before the war ended. Many people felt he was retired to prevent his eventual promotion to general officer during wartime expansion.Ĭol. To protest his forced retirement, he rode his favorite horse from Ohio to Washington, D.C., to prove his stamina and appeal for reinstatement. Young, who was the third black graduate of West Point. Much controversy surrounded the medical retirement of Col. The highest-ranking black officer, and the first African-American to reach the rank of colonel, was Charles Young (section 3, site 1730). Most of these men were assigned to stevedore-depot and other laborer units, but approximately 10 percent were assigned to combat units.ĭespite segregation and discriminatory assignments, 1,300 African-Americans were commissioned officers. Over 400,000 African-Americans served in uniform during World War I. Both men were awarded the Medal of Honor for heroism. Wanton (section 4, site 2749), volunteered to go ashore in the face of the enemy and aided in the rescue of wounded comrades their rescue efforts followed numerous attempts. Cavalry, Dennis Bell (section 31, site 349) and George H.
They were discovered by Spanish scouts and came under heavy fire.Two African-American privates in the 10th U.S. Four months after the Maine explosion, American forces aboard the USS Florida near Tayacoba, Cuba, were providing reconnaissance on Spanish outposts in the area. They are among the 163 sailors buried in section 24, adjacent to the mast of the USS Maine Memorial. When the battleship Maine was sunk in Havana Harbor, Cuba, in 1898, 22 African-American sailors went down with the ship. However, Section 27, the original burial ground at Arlington National Cemetery, contains over 3,800 Freedmen who were residents of other villages in the area or employed in some capacity by the U.S. Although living on the Arlington Estate, burials of residents of the village occurred off the property, in a separate cemetery from Arlington. The average death rate was two-per-day, which was lower than the five-per-day average in Washington, D.C. There were frequent outbreaks of scarlet fever, measles and whooping cough. Villagers lived mostly on crops they grew themselves or on Army rations. Homes in the village were wooden and housed two to four families each. Existing for more than 30 years, Freedmen's Village provided housing, education, training for employment, medical care and food for the former slaves. to protect fugitive slaves from their former slave owners. The village was run by the Freedmen's Bureau during most of its existence, and at one point employed U.S.C.T. government designation for slaves who were freed as Union forces moved South, or who had escaped from local Virginia and Maryland slave owners). Freedman's Village was established on the southeast portion of the Arlington Estate in June 1863, as a camp for Civil War "Contrabands" (the U.S.