The 2015 Medal of Honor for Johnson was therefore not simply the correction of a single historical mistake. It was one correction in a long series of corrections to a documented pattern — a pattern that the Army has acknowledged through the award process and through the naming of Fort Johnson.
## The Specific Recognition of the Fifth Avenue Parade
The Fifth Avenue parade on February 17, 1919, is worth describing in some detail because it was the high point of the public recognition that the 369th received on its return — and because it illustrates both what the country was capable of offering and what it failed to sustain.
An estimated one million people lined Fifth Avenue to watch the 369th march north from Madison Square Park to 110th Street and then to Harlem. The crowd was the largest public gathering in New York City in the period immediately following the armistice. The regiment marched in formation, with its band playing, through streets packed with people who cheered.
The specific segment through Harlem — from 110th Street north through the neighborhood’s main avenues — was an event of a different character than the downtown portion. The crowd in Harlem was predominantly Black, and the parade through Harlem was a homecoming in a specific community sense: these were the soldiers from this neighborhood and this community, returning from a war that had cost them heavily.
Henry Johnson marched in this parade despite his wounds. The specific image of a man with 21 wounds, including a shattered foot, marching the length of that parade route is part of the account of his return.