Company E, 372nd Colored Infantry Regiment

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Select Team Alpha P.C.C. Company E Howard U. Independent Pleasure Club Lincoln U. (Pa.) L.A. Red Devils Monticello A.A. Monticello-Delaney Rifles N.Y. All Stars Philadelphia Panthers N.Y. Renaissance Scholastic A.A. Savoy Big Five Second Story Morrys Smart Set A.C. St. Christopher Club Atlantic City Vandals Washington 12 Streeters

The French commanding general paid tribute, stating, “The ‘Red Hand’ sign of the Division, thanks to you, became a bloody hand. . . . You have well avenged our glorious dead.”

The U.S. command never made any such acknowledgment.

Indeed, some returning African American soldiers, seen as overeager believers in the ideals of the democracy for which they had just fought, were lynched while in uniform.

After the war, some Company E veterans formed a basketball team, based in Springfield, Ohio.

Led by Freeman Lee, the Company E squad played other black teams in the region, including the Center Street Colored YMCA of Springfield and the Pioneers, Keystones, and Swastikas of nearby Cleveland.

The logo of the 372nd Colored Infantry Regiment’s Company E basketball team, nicknamed the “Bloody Hand” for their battlefield heroics, incorporates the regiment’s official military uniform patch, a red hand inside an oval.

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