'Eight months ago the African race in this City was literally hunted down like wild beasts. They were shot down in cold blood, or stoned to death, or hung to the trees or to the lamp-posts... How astonishing has all this been changed! The same men who could not have shown themselves in the most obscure street in the City without peril of instant death, even though in the most supplicant attitude, now march in solid platoons, with shouldered muskets, slung knapsacks, and buckled cartridge boxes down the gayest avenues and busiest thoroughfares to the pealing strains of martial music. And everywhere they are saluted with waving handkerchiefs and descending flowers, and with the acclamations and plaudits of countless beholders.'
"Stationed in Louisiana, the Twentieth ran afoul the South's white civilian population. The soldiers were treated badly and, as a result, took matters into their own hands. Their retaliatory action was written off by the district's inspector general, who offered the excuse that they were Northern blacks, New Yorkers, and therefore could not submit to Southern ways--a foreboding comparison to the utterances by South Carolinians in the autumn of 1917 when another regiment of black New Yorkers "invaded" the South. A jumpy War Department moved swiftly and mustered the Twentieth out of federal service. For the black soldiers of New York, the Civil War was over.
"Now, a half-century later, Colonel Hayward of the Fifteenth New York, as he prepared to lead his troops through Manhattan to the Union League Club to receive its regimental colors, would soon find that when it came to the treatment of blacks in the South, history had a habit of repeating itself."
P.65-66, "The Honor of the State," HARLEM HELL FIGHTERS: African American 369th Infantry in World War I, by Stephen L. Harris (Potomac Books, Washington, D.C.: 2003)
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
HARLEM'S HELL FIGHTERS
"The final leg of departure took the regiment to the Battery, where it then boarded the transport steamer "Ericsson" and journeyed south. Along the route, New Yorkers filled the streets to cheer the city's black soldiers. The scene moved an editorial writer for the "Times" to write the following:
'Eight months ago the African race in this City was literally hunted down like wild beasts. They were shot down in cold blood, or stoned to death, or hung to the trees or to the lamp-posts... How astonishing has all this been changed! The same men who could not have shown themselves in the most obscure street in the City without peril of instant death, even though in the most supplicant attitude, now march in solid platoons, with shouldered muskets, slung knapsacks, and buckled cartridge boxes down the gayest avenues and busiest thoroughfares to the pealing strains of martial music. And everywhere they are saluted with waving handkerchiefs and descending flowers, and with the acclamations and plaudits of countless beholders.'
"Stationed in Louisiana, the Twentieth ran afoul the South's white civilian population. The soldiers were treated badly and, as a result, took matters into their own hands. Their retaliatory action was written off by the district's inspector general, who offered the excuse that they were Northern blacks, New Yorkers, and therefore could not submit to Southern ways--a foreboding comparison to the utterances by South Carolinians in the autumn of 1917 when another regiment of black New Yorkers "invaded" the South. A jumpy War Department moved swiftly and mustered the Twentieth out of federal service. For the black soldiers of New York, the Civil War was over.
"Now, a half-century later, Colonel Hayward of the Fifteenth New York, as he prepared to lead his troops through Manhattan to the Union League Club to receive its regimental colors, would soon find that when it came to the treatment of blacks in the South, history had a habit of repeating itself."
P.65-66, "The Honor of the State," HARLEM HELL FIGHTERS: African American 369th Infantry in World War I, by Stephen L. Harris (Potomac Books, Washington, D.C.: 2003)
'Eight months ago the African race in this City was literally hunted down like wild beasts. They were shot down in cold blood, or stoned to death, or hung to the trees or to the lamp-posts... How astonishing has all this been changed! The same men who could not have shown themselves in the most obscure street in the City without peril of instant death, even though in the most supplicant attitude, now march in solid platoons, with shouldered muskets, slung knapsacks, and buckled cartridge boxes down the gayest avenues and busiest thoroughfares to the pealing strains of martial music. And everywhere they are saluted with waving handkerchiefs and descending flowers, and with the acclamations and plaudits of countless beholders.'
"Stationed in Louisiana, the Twentieth ran afoul the South's white civilian population. The soldiers were treated badly and, as a result, took matters into their own hands. Their retaliatory action was written off by the district's inspector general, who offered the excuse that they were Northern blacks, New Yorkers, and therefore could not submit to Southern ways--a foreboding comparison to the utterances by South Carolinians in the autumn of 1917 when another regiment of black New Yorkers "invaded" the South. A jumpy War Department moved swiftly and mustered the Twentieth out of federal service. For the black soldiers of New York, the Civil War was over.
"Now, a half-century later, Colonel Hayward of the Fifteenth New York, as he prepared to lead his troops through Manhattan to the Union League Club to receive its regimental colors, would soon find that when it came to the treatment of blacks in the South, history had a habit of repeating itself."
P.65-66, "The Honor of the State," HARLEM HELL FIGHTERS: African American 369th Infantry in World War I, by Stephen L. Harris (Potomac Books, Washington, D.C.: 2003)