Johnson’s enlistment in this unit placed him in a formation that was, from its origins, navigating a double reality: it was an American military unit in every formal sense, subject to American military law, drilling to American military standards, organized along American military lines — and it was a unit whose members were excluded from the full range of the American military experience by the racial policies that governed every aspect of American life in 1917.
The regiment trained initially in New York, then at Camp Whitman, and then at Camp Wadsworth in Spartanburg, South Carolina. The Camp Wadsworth period was marked by the specific pressures of a Northern Black unit training in the Jim Crow South. The accounts note routine harassment in Spartanburg, and at least one incident — involving the unit’s bandleader, Noble Sissle — that the regimental commander, Colonel William Hayward, worked quickly to defuse. The regiment was ordered overseas before the tensions could escalate further.
The regiment shipped to France in December 1917, arriving as 1918 began. It had been mustered into federal service in July 1917, redesignated, and was eventually renumbered as the 369th Infantry Regiment of the 93rd Division. This designation — the 369th — is the name that history has given the unit.
## The French Army and the Segregated American Expeditionary Forces
What happened to the 369th in France was a direct consequence of the racial policies of the American Expeditionary Forces under General John Pershing.
Pershing was building a coherent American army in France, insisting against French and British pressure that American units would fight as an integrated American force rather than being piecemealed into Allied formations as replacements. This policy had a sound military rationale: Pershing wanted to build an American army with American command structure, American doctrine, and the kind of institutional cohesion that comes from units fighting together under their own officers.