At the institutional level, his story is part of the documented pattern of the American military’s systematic under-decoration of Black soldiers — a pattern that the Army has studied, acknowledged, and partially corrected through the posthumous award process.
At the cultural level, his story is part of the history of Black Americans’ relationship with American military service — a history of serving a country that did not fully recognize their citizenship, of earning honor in contexts where the country’s rules applied less completely (France, in Johnson’s case), and of returning home to find that the service had not changed the fundamental terms of that relationship.
The Medal of Honor in 2015 and the Fort Johnson naming in 2023 are partial corrections at the institutional level. They do not restore the disability compensation Johnson should have received in 1919. They do not change the specific conditions of his post-war life. They are the country’s formal acknowledgment, belated, that what he did was what it was.
## The 15th New York’s Pre-War Organization
The Fifteenth New York Infantry, before it became the 369th, had been organized with specific effort against institutional resistance that is worth documenting.
New York City had African American civic and community leaders who had been pushing for a Black National Guard unit for years before the First World War. The argument was straightforward: Black men should have the same right to serve in New York’s National Guard as white men, with the same training, equipment, and opportunities. The opposition was equally straightforward: white National Guard units did not want Black units alongside them, and the state’s military establishment was not inclined to force the issue.