One Righteous Man : Samuel Battle and the Shattering of the Color Line in New York (9780807012611)

by Browne, Arthur

  THE NEWSPAPERS OF May 1918 brought Battle up short. Almost six months had passed with scant news of the Fifteenth, but now a headline declared:

  Two N.Y. Negroes

  Whip 24 Germans

  Win War Crosses

  City’s Colored Men in First

  Fight, Decorated for

  Gallantry

  Then, with mounting joy, Battle read a war correspondent’s astonishing words: “Our own ‘cullud folks’—negro infantrymen mainly from the State and City of New York—have met the Germans and worsted them.” And there, just below, was a tale of “dusky warriors” and “the glorious exploit of Privates Henry Johnson and Needham Roberts.”57

  All across the United States, Battle’s cousin Roberts and Johnson, a redcap from Albany, were a heroic sensation. Honored as few blacks had ever been honored, they delighted Battle and his colleagues at the Equity Congress for proving in extraordinary measure the American fiber of the black soldier. The path from the Sheep Meadow to valor had been long and hard.

  At the beginning of 1918, the Fifteenth had landed in Brest and boarded boxcars for transport to Saint-Nazaire, where the troops were pressed into laying railroad tracks and building docks, a hospital, and a dam. The Saint-Nazaire camp was “a racial war zone” in the description of Gail Buckley, whose American Patriots is an impressively researched history of African Americans in the US military. Interviewed by Buckley, one aged veteran recounted that white Marines “began killing black soldiers one by one,” prompting blacks to retaliate by killing whites.58

  The men pressed Hayward for a transfer into combat. Hayward appealed to General “Black Jack” Pershing without success, but a desperate French army offered to take the troops to the front under its command. With Pershing’s approval, the Fifteenth then became the first American regiment to serve entirely beneath a foreign flag. The French dubbed the men les enfants perdu, the forgotten orphans.

  Redesignated as the 369th Infantry, the regiment went to the front as the first of the thirty-seven thousand American black troops who were allowed into combat, while more than four times as many were limited to logistical duties.59 The men plunged into the horrors of trench warfare amid exhausted Frenchmen and heavy German attack. The trenches were muddy and ran with blood. Beyond barbed wire, rotting corpses littered no man’s land. Artillery shells, laden with explosives and shrapnel or poison gas, dropped random death to earth.

  Spread on a four-kilometer line that ran from the ruins of Ville-sur-Tourbe to the Aisne River, the orphans took to the fight—with the exception of Jim Europe’s band. On orders, he led a goodwill tour that introduced the demoralized French to swing music unlike any they had ever heard. Every performance was a rousing success. In Aix-les-Bains, the audience “rose en masse” with word that the band was heading to the front and carried the men to a troop train.

  The regiment built forward ambuscades to guard against nighttime stealth attacks. Post 29 was isolated near a bridge over the Aisne. There, Battle read in the newspaper, Needham Roberts peered into the blackness after two-thirty in the morning. His partner on guard, five-foot, four-inch Henry Johnson, was about forty feet away. Roberts heard a sound, perhaps the click of wire cutters. When Roberts and Johnson heard the sound again, they fired an illuminating rocket and shouted “Corporal of the Guard” in alert.

  A raiding party opened fire and hurled hand grenades. Roberts and Johnson were wounded and knocked down. Propped against a door of the dugout, Roberts threw grenades toward where the Germans had been. Johnson got to his feet. A German loomed out of the darkness. Johnson fired, taking the man down but emptying his magazine. A second German rushed forward with a pistol. Johnson cracked the man’s skull with the butt of his rifle.

  Two of the enemy had hold of Roberts and were dragging him off. Johnson fell under gunfire, struggled to his feet, unsheathed a bolo knife, and plunged the eight-inch blade into the skull of a German who had Roberts by the shoulders. He turned the knife on the second of Robert’s captors. The attacker who had fallen under the blow of Johnson’s rifle butt fired a Luger. Wounded again, Johnson disemboweled the man. As American sentries arrived, Johnson threw grenades after retreating Germans. Then he slumped, wounded in both legs and both feet.60

  Major Arthur Little, a white veteran who had enlisted in the Fifteenth because no white regiment would take him at the age of forty-three, tracked the German retreat “by pools of blood” and enough abandoned equipment to indicate that the raiding party had included as many as twenty-four men. That morning, three New York war correspondents happened to visit the regiment and sent home the story read by Battle and all of America.

  And, eight years after starting the fight to create an African American National Guard regiment, the Equity Congress sent a dispatch to the “Officers and Men of the 15th Regiment of New York; with the American Expeditionary Forces in France.” It read: “Colored people of New York and America in general, join the Equity Congress (your association) in congratulating you upon your splendid victory; especially Privates Henry Johnson and Needham Roberts.”

  The war to end all wars was over for Johnson and Roberts. They were hospitalized for long recuperations, while the report of their exploits prompted the French, for the first time, to award the Croix de Guerre to Americans. In recognition of Johnson’s hand-to-hand fight, they bestowed on him the still-higher honor of the Croix de Guerre avec Palme. Both men sailed from France without the slightest official American recognition, not even a Purple Heart.

  ANTICIPATING MIGHTY RESISTANCE, Battle strategized with Wesley and Chief Williams to maximize Wesley’s chances of winning appointment to the fire department. Wesley would have to pass a written examination and a medical evaluation. Additionally, the department required applicants to undergo a physical test that assessed strength and speed and to submit written attestations of good character. With no shot at enrolling in the Delehanty Institute, Wesley embarked on intense self-study. Publications available for review at the municipal reference library covered subjects including fire department duties and rules, technical descriptions of steam pumpers, fire prevention techniques, the safety obligations of theaters, and the structure of city government—plus memory and arithmetic drills.

  After Wesley registered for the civil service exam, his honey-colored skin was a notice to the department that its twenty-seven hundred applicants included a black man. Called for the physical test, Wesley assembled with several hundred of the men against whom he was competing. There was a distance run. Wesley far outpaced his heat with one of the fastest times ever recorded by the department. Loaded down with gear and weights, he raced up and down ladders and climbed over and under obstacles with similar ease. He proved to be the sole applicant—and only the second in the department’s history—to achieve a 100 percent score. Then, he was almost as proficient on the written exam.

  The marks ranked Wesley in the thirteenth spot on the hiring list, guaranteeing that the commissioner would reach his name. Battle celebrated with Wesley and the Chief and insisted that Wesley undergo a physical by a white doctor to be ready with indisputable evidence of good health. The doctor pronounced him in excellent condition.

  The Chief, meanwhile, secured letters of recommendation from some of the prominent men with whom he had become friendly as head of the redcaps. To Battle’s delight, Teddy Roosevelt gave Wesley an endorsement. The chief also stopped by to see Charles Thorley in the hope that the politically connected proprietor of the House of Flowers would back Wesley if need be. Thorley committed to providing whatever help he could.

  It was widely believed that the fire department had never admitted a black man. In fact, in 1898, William Nicholson of Brooklyn had passed all the tests required for appointment, but he was relegated to working as a groom for wagon horses. In 1914, John Woodson, a former mail messenger, quietly joined the department and kept a low profile in a Brooklyn firehouse. Neither Battle nor Wesley nor anyone in the Equity Congress knew of Woodson, nor was he aware of them.
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  Now, word spread that an African American would be assigned to a firehouse. Woodson got the news when the black-oriented Chicago Defender published a story. He wrote to Wesley with advice that was remarkably similar to Battle’s: “Do your work and do it as near perfect as you can” and “do everything the commanding officers tell you to do, no matter what it might be, do it.” Woodson also counseled: “If they speak of our race before you, in your presence, as niggers, pay no attention—go and do something or take a newspaper and read.”

  While Battle and Wesley accepted Woodson’s words as wise counsel, they also took for granted that Wesley would need more than forbearance: they expected that he would have to use his fists. Wesley had learned self-defense at the Colored Men’s Branch of the YMCA under the training regimen of wrestler and judo black belt C. A. Ramsey. He and Battle would also run through boxing workouts there. They were in excellent company because two of the greatest heavyweights of the day trained at the Y. Sam Langford had come up through the ranks known as the “Boston Tar Baby,” had lost to Jack Johnson early in his career, and had spent years seeking a rematch that was never to come. Jeremiah “Joe” Jeanette had fought Johnson seven times before Johnson claimed the world title and then was denied a further bout. Both fighters had held the colored world championship. They happily ran Wesley through sandbag and punching bag drills and sparred with him.

  “Look, you better stay in shape, Sonny,” they warned, “’cause when you get downtown with them Irishmen—you are going to have to defend yourself.”

  IN FRANCE, THE regiment fought on through the bloody concluding thrusts of the war and was the first to reach the Rhine. Never having fought under the American flag, the men who had been ridiculed as “darkies playing soldiers” were now the renowned “Hellfighters of Harlem.” They had spent 191 days at the front, longer than any other company, had never surrendered a foot of ground, and had never lost a man to capture. Two hundred had given their lives in combat and eight hundred had been wounded.61

  A little more than a month after the armistice, on December 13, 1918, the French pinned the Croix de Guerre on the regimental colors of the 369th in recognition of the unit’s courage and sacrifices. The men then returned to the indignities that came with serving under American command. At the port of Brest, a military policeman clubbed a private for the affront of interrupting the MP’s conversation to ask for directions to a latrine. Orders barred MPs from saluting officers of the 369th, white or black, because, Major Little was told, the “niggers” were “feeling their oats.”

  WESLEY’S APPOINTMENT TO the New York City Fire Department came through on January 10, 1919. He was assigned to Engine Company 55 in Lower Manhattan, a neighborhood renowned as Hell’s Hundred Acres. The buildings were of two kinds: tenements whose wooden construction was akin to kindling, and factory lofts filled with flammable materials and supported by cast-iron columns that were prone to melting and collapse in a fire. By New York Central and subway, the firehouse was two hours from Williamsbridge. The long commute seemed the department’s way of telling Wesley that he was not wanted. Firefighters tended to work close to home, and dozens of firehouses were closer to Williamsbridge.

  Concerned that the brass had begun a campaign of harassment, Chief Williams took advantage of Thorley’s Tammany Hall connections to get word to the fire commissioner that Wesley was in the department to stay. The commissioner responded that the door was open, but once through, Wesley would be on his own. With that sure understanding and with last words of love and support from his parents, Margaret, and Battle, Wesley set off to face what came. He could see his destination from far down the street. Opened in 1899, the firehouse was among dozens that had been ornately designed in a burst of construction. Its three stories had a brick and limestone façade and a copper-tiled mansard roof. A tower rose an additional eight feet and was fitted with hooks that allowed for hanging hoses down through the firehouse to dry after use. A single arched doorway that had been built to accommodate horse-drawn equipment dominated the front and was topped by a carved stone banner, “55 ENGINE 55.”

  The company’s sixteen men anticipated Wesley’s arrival. Some were on the street. He greeted them. They said nothing. He walked into a long, rectangular, vaulted chamber and reported for duty to a captain named Doyle. The entire company had been alerted to watch. Doyle ostentatiously stormed into retirement. The men expressed their feelings with mute hard glares. Wesley asked about equipment and accommodations. Responding to the most limited extent possible, the men pointed him to a second-floor bunkroom. They had removed a bed from the standard arrangement and had set it aside by the toilet. This was where he would sleep during a workweek that entailed staying on duty for five straight days, with four hours of free time each day. Wesley took the bunk without complaint.

  Deprived as Battle had been of man-to-man workplace instruction, Wesley absorbed rules and routines by observation, as a campaign of harassment unfolded. When he went upstairs to the second floor, the men went downstairs, and vice versa. After his first meal at the company’s communal table, a firefighter broke the plate and drinking glass that Wesley had used, setting a standard practice of throwing out any kitchen utensil that touched a black man’s lips. A lieutenant assigned Wesley to stationhouse cleanup, as was customary for a rookie. The work included emptying spittoons—and, for Wesley, extended to finding them filled with urine. Every firefighter filed for reassignment, most writing on transfer requests that they refused to work with “a nigger.” The commissioner barred transfers for a year.62

  Depending how close a firefighter lived to the station, he could go home once, twice, or three times a day to eat and relax on his four hours of free time. Not Wesley. He could barely get to Williamsbridge and back in four hours. So he stayed confined to a building that was only twenty-four feet wide and one hundred feet from front to back. He felt that he had been sentenced to prison.

  THE FIFTEENTH, NOW redesignated as the 369th Regiment, sailed into New York Harbor in February 1919. Battle met changed men. In the beginning, they had been given to excessively saluting superiors; now they were confident figures who looked others in the eye. Many showed the toll of the war in uneven gaits and the wheeze of damaged lungs. Napoleon Marshall, age forty-three when he landed in France, was upright and mobile only with the help of “a special steel corsage to support my back.” Despite the severity of his injuries, the military classified Marshall as only 29 percent disabled, less than the 30 percent needed to qualify for benefits. Still, he was as ebullient as ever. He wrote:

  Even after all I have suffered from my adventure in patriotism—for adventure it was, since I was beyond the age of conscription—I have never had any misgivings or felt any remorse, finding cheer and comfort always in the immortal lines of the beloved Edward Everett Hale:

  Breathes there a man with soul so dead

  Who never to himself has said,

  This is my own, my native land?63

  Hayward had promised the regiment “the greatest parade . . . that New York has ever seen.” They would not be invited to the Victory Parade in July, but New York on February 17, 1919, scheduled a celebration in honor of the only American regiment to bear a state’s name. That Monday morning, as “godfather” to the regiment, Battle joined the line of march. Led by the music of James Reese Europe’s band, with Noble Sissle out front as drum major, the returned heroes stepped off in solid, square phalanxes, thirty-five feet on a side. Battle strode with Needham Roberts beside a car bearing a flower-draped Henry Johnson, for whom walking had become a struggle.64 One shinbone had been replaced by a steel tube; most of the bones in one foot had been lost, so that Johnson moved “in a manner that might be described as ‘slap-foot.’” His discharge papers would state that Johnson had been “severely” wounded, but they would also rate that he had zero percent disability, disqualifying him, too, for benefits.65

  The formation stepped up Fifth Avenue from Twenty-Third Street, in front of a reviewing stand on w
hich sat dignitaries including Governor Al Smith, former governor Whitman, William Randolph Hearst, and Secretary of State Francis Hugo. Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers, white and black, cheered along the seven-mile route that culminated in tumultuous Harlem. In the outpouring, it was possible to believe that heroic service had finally won full United States citizenship for blacks, as had been hoped for in the story of Battle’s ancestor in the American Revolution, as Frederick Douglass had envisioned in the Civil War, as African Americans had dreamed in the Spanish-American War, and as Battle and the Equity Congress had sought in fighting for a regiment whose accomplishments had far exceeded expectations.

  THE GREAT MIGRATION had accelerated through the war years, so that, by the armistice, an ascendant black majority dominated Harlem. At the same time, the proud bearing of the regimental marchers exemplified a sense that the United States had reached a racial milestone with the rise of the New Negro, a people prepared to demand the equal treatment that had always been owed. Du Bois trumpeted the spirit in “Returning Soldiers,” an essay in the Crisis that concluded:

  We return.

  We return from fighting.

  We return fighting.

  Make way for Democracy! We saved it in France, and by the Great Jehovah, we will save it in the United States of America, or know the reason why.66

  The rallying optimism of the moment proved ephemeral. In 1918, the war’s last year, the country recorded seventy-eight black lynchings, including those of a husband and wife, Haynes and Mary Turner. A white mob in Georgia shot Haynes dead in random retaliation for the murder of a white man. After Mary, who was eight months pregnant, protested her husband’s murder, a mob hung her by the ankles, doused her with gasoline, and set her ablaze. A man cut open her belly. Turner’s near-term baby fell to the ground, uttered a cry, and was stomped to death.