 |
Most of the nearly 400,000 African American soldiers who served in the US Army during World War I worked in segregated labor battalions, but 20 percent fought in two specially created all-black combat units, the 92nd and 93rd Divisions, under command of white officers.
The 93rd Division comprised four infantry regiments, including the 372nd Infantry Regiment, staffed by 900 men from the 9th Separate Colored Infantry Battalion of the Ohio National Guard; 9th Battalion units from Springfield, Ohio made up the 372nd’s Company E.
In 1918, United States military commanders refused to let black and white Americans fight side by side, but French leaders had no such objection so when the 372nd Infantry Regiment arrived in France they were immediately assigned to the 157th Infantry of the French Army—the renowned Red Hand Division—to help fight in the famous Meuse-Argonne offensive.
In two weeks of combat, the 372nd suffered 616 casualties and 107 deaths, but their advance was decisive in ending the war and the entire unit received the Croix de Guerre, France’s highest military honor.
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 US 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.
Please click HERE to download the Company E team poster shown above!
