Biden to sign bill giving medal to Harlem Hellfighters which included many Long Islanders

President Joe Biden is set to honor a predominantly Black regiment nicknamed the Harlem Hellfighters — in which at least 40 men from the Sea Cliff, Locust Valley, Oyster Bay and Glen Cove area served during World War I — who have long been denied their due.

Biden is to sign a bill — tentatively scheduled to happen during the week of Aug. 23 — to award the Congressional Gold Medal to the regiment, whose personnel were denied weapons by the U.S. military while fighting for their own country and served alongside the French, said U.S. Rep Tom Suozzi (D-Glen Cove), the bill's lead sponsor.

"Think about where this country was at the time — that these soldiers who signed up to serve the United States of America, and the white soldiers wouldn’t fight with them — they had to put them with the French," Suozzi said Friday morning at an event at the 369th Regiment Armory in Harlem where he held a French helmet the men would have worn.

Debra Willett, granddaughter of Sgt. Leander Willett of Oyster Bay, who served with the Hellfighters, was among the people attending Friday's event. During the war her grandfather was stabbed with a bayonet and attacked with mustard gas, but did not get a Purple Heart, which Suozzi’s office helped secure in 2019.

"With all the divisions that we, unfortunately, now see in our great country, sometimes we have to look in the past to find a road to the future," she said, "and with the passage of this bill, I think that perhaps maybe we found a road, a road that will take us to a brighter future for all of America."

There have been about 200 Gold Medals in American history, one of which went to the Tuskegee Airmen, the first Black flying unit in the U.S. military, he said.

The White House press office did not respond to a request for comment about the bill, which the House passed in June and the Senate earlier this week.

At the event, speakers recounted the 191 days that the infantry served under enemy fire and how, upon the Hellfighters’ return to the United States, they faced the same discrimination, segregation and other mistreatment others Blacks did.

Initially, the Black soldiers were to play a supporting role driving trucks and serving food, but were assigned to the French military, who gave the Hellfighters helmets, weapons, belts and other supplies and assigned them to fight.

"They fought long, they fought hard, in my country, France, helping us turn over and fight a war and secure a victory for the Allies," said Damien Laban, deputy consul of France in New York City.

U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who helped shepherd the bill through the Senate, called the treatment of the Hellfighters "a disgrace, a blot, on this country that will live forever, unfortunately."

By Matthew Chayes

matthew.chayes@newsday.comchayesmatthew

Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.