Command Sergeant Major Louis Wilson of the New York National Guard accepted the Medal of Honor on Johnson’s behalf. Herman Johnson, who had led the family’s advocacy campaign for years, had died in 2004 — eleven years before the ceremony he had pushed for.
Obama’s remarks at the ceremony placed Johnson’s story in the specific context of what the country owed him. The White House press release noted the 97 years between the action and the award: not 97 years after his death, but 97 years after the night at Outpost 20 when Johnson had earned it.
The ceremony made official what the historical record had established: that Henry Johnson had performed actions on May 15, 1918, that warranted the highest decoration the United States could give a soldier. That the country had taken 97 years to give it was a fact about the country as well as about the man.
## Fort Johnson: 2023
In June 2023 — eight years after the Medal of Honor ceremony — the United States Army renamed Fort Polk, Louisiana, as Fort Johnson, in honor of Henry Johnson.
Fort Polk was one of several Army installations renamed in 2023 as part of the congressionally mandated Naming Commission process, which was established to rename bases that had been named for Confederate officers — military men who had fought against the United States Army. The renaming process was itself a contested political process, but its outcome at Fort Polk was the specific choice to honor Johnson.
Fort Johnson, Louisiana, now carries the name of the Albany railroad porter who had enlisted in June 1917, fought with the French Army because the American Army would not place him alongside white soldiers, earned the French Croix de Guerre with Gold Palm for extraordinary valor in a hand-to-hand fight in a forest in northern France, and received the American Medal of Honor 97 years after the action that earned it.