HARLEM HELLFIGHTERS—Soldiers of the 369th regiment of the American Army (Harlem Hellfighters) who won the Croix de Guerre for gallantry in action. Left to right. Front row: Ed Williams, Herbert Taylor, Leon Fraitor, Ralph Hawkins. Back row: Sergeant H.D. Primas, Sergeant Dan Storms, Joe Williams, Alfred Hanley, Caporal T.W. Taylor. 1919. (Photo by: Photo 12/ Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Includes native Pittsburgher Henry Davis Primas
by Joseph Williams
Word in Black
It took more than a century, and a literal act of Congress, to happen. It came decades after the last of them—Black World War I combat veterans who had survived the blood-and-guts brutality of trench warfare in Europe and suffered the dehumanization of Jim Crow—had passed.
But the Harlem Hellfighters, an all-Black, all-volunteer regiment whose battlefield heroics are the stuff of legend, finally got their due from the United States government on Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2025, when lawmakers awarded them the Congressional Gold Medal, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
Honoring the 369th Regiment
As their children and grandchildren looked on, House Speaker Mike Johnson bestowed the honor on the military unit formally known as the New York Army National Guard 369th Infantry Regiment—a segregated force that fought with distinction in the French countryside.
The afternoon ceremony in the U.S. Capitol was a capstone for Rep. Tom Suozzi, a New York Democrat who made it his mission to win official recognition for the Hellfighters. Suozzi launched the years-long drive, some 100 years after the war ended, when he learned several of the fighting men had come from his district.
“It’s never too late to do the right thing,” he said.
Honored for Heroism by France
One of the most celebrated Black regiments in The Great War and collective winners of the Croix de Guerre, France’s highest military honor, the Hellfighters were known for their courage and relentlessness on the battlefield. Although U.S. commanders had restricted them to manual labor, like digging latrines or handling cargo—and openly doubted their fortitude—the French army, badly in need of reinforcements, gave the Black troops a chance to prove themselves.
The list of the 369th’s accomplishments is historic. America’s first Black National Guard unit, the Hellfighters, served 191 consecutive days on the front lines, a record for U.S. troops in the French theater. Involved in some of the bloodiest battles of the war, the Hellfighters were among the first American soldiers France honored for heroism, but they also suffered more casualties than any other unit. Nicknamed by German soldiers who had to face them in combat, the Hellfighters also brought jazz music to the French.
Henry Primas was born on May 26, 1894, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Meshach and Annette Wilson Primas. Henry graduated with a pharmacy degree from the University of Pittsburgh in 1914. He enlisted on November 16, 1917. Due to his education, he was transferred to the 369th Infantry Medical Detachment. During World War I, he was awarded the Croix de Guerre for bravery. He was honorably discharged on February 24, 1919. After being discharged, Primas returned home to Pittsburgh and worked as a pharmacist. He later retired from the U.S. Post Office. He died on May 3, 1961, at the age of 66. He was buried at Homewood Cemetery in Pittsburgh.
Returning to Racism
Yet the Black troops who helped make the world safe for democracy—who never surrendered an inch of ground on the battlefield or lost a man to enemy capture—could not overcome systemic racism in America.
Though they were honored with a parade down Fifth Avenue in New York City when the war ended, the men returned to second-class citizenship when the cheers died down. Despite exceeding all expectations on the battlefield and conquering a feared enemy, the only postwar jobs many could find were menial ones: elevator operator, chauffeur, laborer. Dozens of war heroes died without acclaim or in poverty.
Along with Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, the guest list at the Gold Medal ceremony included influential Washington figures: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The setting itself—the Capitol’s Emancipation Hall, a modern, sunlit space decorated with life-sized statues of noteworthy Americans —brimmed with history. The Library of Congress set up displays of Harlem Hellfighters artifacts, including a uniform jacket and boots, helmet, the unit’s coiled-viper insignia patch, a meticulously detailed combat diary, and maps of the 369th’s combat positions in the French countryside.
In his speech, Suozzi said he got the idea to honor the Hellfighters after discovering 40 of them came from Glen Cove, New York, his hometown. He also noted that one of them, Sgt. Leander Willett, was wounded in battle but never received a Purple Heart.
Debra Willet, the granddaughter of Sgt. Leander Willet of the Harlem Hellfighters of World War I, accepts a Congressional Gold Medal from Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., right, to honor the Hellfighters in Emancipation Hall on Wednesday, September 3, 2025. Credit: (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
“He died long before we could properly honor him,” Suozzi said.
With help from New York historians, his colleagues from the state’s congressional delegation, and some of the Hellfighters’ surviving relatives, Suozzi put together legislation that won bipartisan approval on Capitol Hill. After former President Joe Biden signed a bill awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to the unit, Suozzi and Johnson, the House speaker, worked together to schedule the ceremony.
“Brave, Bold, and Beguiling Patriots”
During the event, one speaker after another extolled the Hellfighters’ fearlessness in combat, their unyielding defense of democracy, and their undying belief in American ideals— even though those ideals didn’t often apply to them.
Jeffries, the highest-ranking House Democrat, said the troops “were brave, bold and beguiling patriots who loved America even when America didn’t show the same love for them.”
Rep. Adriano Espaillat, a Democrat who represents Harlem, called them “patriots of the highest valor.”
Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio, also a Democrat, noted some Black Ohioans came to Harlem to serve with the Hellfighters; the Congressional Gold Medal, she said, ensures their names won’t be forgotten.
Hegseth, the defense secretary, told the audience that the Hellfighters were so determined to prove themselves in combat that nothing could stop them. When their transport ship to France needed repairs on the high seas in the dead of winter, Hegseth said, a team of men created makeshift harnesses and slung themselves overboard in freezing rain to fix it.
In his speech, however, Schumer pointed out that Hegseth himself disrespected the name of Henry Johnson—perhaps the Hellfighters’ greatest hero, a posthumous Medal of Honor recipient who single-handedly repelled a German attack.
When Biden was in office, the Pentagon renamed an Army fort in Johnson’s honor that had been named for Leonidas Polk, a Confederate general. But when Hegseth became defense secretary under President Donald Trump, he stripped away Johnson’s name and re-christened it Fort Polk—this time, for Gen. James H. Polk, a White World War II hero.
“It was such a proud, proud moment” when Fort Johnson came to be, and a sad one when Fort Polk reappeared, Schumer said, his voice rising. “A [military] base deserves to bear the name” of a Harlem Hellfighter.
“I hope today shows what a mistake that was,” he said, to applause.