When the Civil War ended, the US Army created six (later consolidated to four) African-American regiments, numbering about a quarter of the total of the post-war Army. Yet, when the US entered World War I, the Army saw fit to deploy those units along the southern border and the Philippines and to create two African American divisions and transfer 1,600 soldiers to their ranks: the 92nd Division under US command and the 93rd Division, which was parceled out to foreign command.
The 93rd Division was organized at Camp Stuart, Newport News, Virginia, in December 1917. The unit was unique in that it was limited to four infantry regiments (three from National Guard units from New York, Illinois, Ohio, Maryland, Tennessee, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Washington, DC) and one regiment from North and South Carolina. Thus, it lacked uniformity in its experience and leadership (white officers with a few African Americans in junior grades), and lacked artillery brigades, divisional troops or trains, and a full complement of combat units and support elements. It never attained full divisional strength and never really functioned as a division. Instead, the 369th, 370th, 371st and 372nd Regiments were offered up to the exhausted and depleted French Army, which then trained them, equipped them, fed them, deployed them, commanded them, and rewarded them. As a result, they adopted the blue French helmet as their division symbol. The four regiments were parceled out to different divisions and never fought together. Three of them served very close-by in the Champagne and the fourth served north of the Marne. For their valor, the regiments were showered with honors to include the French Legion of Honor, 75 Distinguished Service Crosses and 527 Croix de Guerre medals, making the 93rd Division one of the most highly honored in Army history. A white officer, First Lieutenant George Robb was awarded the Medal of Honor in 1919. It would take decades before the US Army bestowed Medals of Honor on Corporal Freddie Stowers (1991) and Sergeant Henry Johnson (2015). The fame of the 369th Regiment “Harlem Hellfighters” and their military band under Lieutenant James Europe, credited with introducing Jazz to France, are more well known today, but all four regiments had remarkable records fighting under the French, as compared to its counterpart, the 92nd Division, which suffered under US leadership. The division was deactivated in 1919.
The 93rd Division was reactivated on 15 May 1942 at Fort Huachuca, Arizona with three regiments (368th, 269th and 25th). A 1925 Army War College study had argued the inferiority of black soldiers, the need to segregate units by race, and that limits be placed limits on black officers by position and rank. It was a blueprint for continued institutional racism in the interwar period and bore fruit when the division was reformed. The division is credited with service in New Guinea (January 1943 - December 1944), the Northern Solomons (February 1943 - November 1944), the Bismarck Archipelago (December 1943 - November 1944) and the Liberation of the Philippines (July 1945 – January 1946), but in reality they were mostly used in labor and security missions. However, Staff Sergeant Leonard Dowden was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross posthumously for defending his unit during a Japanese attack in the Philippines. The regiment returned to the United States in February 1946 and was inactivated. They deserve our respect and their spot on the Wall of Honor at the National Museum of the US Army
