Thursday, October 1, 2026
The North Shore Historical Museum honored the legacy of the Harlem Hellfighters, and the local effort that helped secure the unit a Congressional Gold Medal more than a century after their service in World War I, last weekend.
Capping off Black History Month on Feb. 28, the event served as a local homecoming, after the Hellfighters — members of the 369th Infantry Regiment in World War I — were formally honored in Washington and their descendants accepted the medal at a ceremony at the U.S. Capitol last September.
The guests included Rep. Tom Suozzi; Richard Harris, the John J. McMullen Professor of Humanities at Webb Institute and a co-chair of the Harlem Hellfighters Recognition Project; Fred Nielsen, a retired U.S. Marine Corps major and the other co-chair of the project; Kenny Jones, a descendant of the Fowler family, several members of which served in the 369th; and other descendants, including Gloria Fowler-Jones and Deborah Willett.
The event highlighted the role that Glen Cove residents played in advocating for national recognition for the Hellfighters, whose achievements were largely overlooked for decades.
“We’re a very young museum,” Georgie Connett, the facility’s president, said. “But it’s a place where people can come and take a step back and look at what’s happened in the past that brought us all, from the North Shore, to where we are today.”
Connett noted that the museum’s exhibit on the Hellfighters, installed in 2018 — which includes one of the medals — helped spark broader recognition efforts.
“Just from that humble beginning of that exhibit, we culminated in going to D.C. and received a Congressional Gold Medal,” she said. “And it’s still amazing that this happened.”
Harris described how researching local soldiers helped bring their stories to light. “What makes history fascinating is not just those facts, but to me, the lives of the people we can find out about,” he said.
Uncovering the Hellfighters’ stories, Harris said, helped drive the effort to secure national recognition for them. Harris also had a hand in designing the congressional medal, helped develop the medal’s imagery and symbolism.
“We were responsible for the design of the medal,” Harris said. “We wanted to be sure that it’s clear these weren’t just other soldiers — we wanted them to look like African-Americans.”
The design includes several historical symbols associated with the regiment’s service, including the French Croix de Guerre and the American and French flags. The medal also reflects the cultural influence the soldiers had overseas, Harris added. One of the images is of a saxophone crisscrossed over a rifle.
“One of the things the 369th did was, they introduced jazz to the Europeans, to the French,” he said. “It was a revolution in European culture once they heard jazz, really for the first time.”
Nielsen said that learning about the Hellfighters was eye-opening.
“I’m a retired military officer,” he said. “I never heard the words ‘Harlem Hellfighter,’ ever.”
After discovering the unit’s history through Harris’s research, Nielsen said, they felt compelled to push for recognition. The effort began with a small group of local residents who believed the soldiers deserved national recognition.
Suozzi told the attendees that the effort to secure the medal began with local advocacy, and required years of work in Congress. The process, Suozzi explained, necessitated building bipartisan support in Washington.
“To break through all the noise of Washington, D.C., to get people to pay attention to do something that’s only been done about 180 times in the history of America, is not an easy thing to do,” he said.
Descendant Kenny Jones detailed his connection to the Fowler family. “My great-grandfather fought in World War I as a Harlem Hellfighter in the 369th, and his brothers — six of them went to World War I,” Jones said. “And they all managed to come back home safe and sound.”
Learning more about the regiment’s history, Jones added, deepened his appreciation for their sacrifices. “I knew about the Harlem Hellfighters, but I didn’t know to the extent of what these gentlemen [were] actually doing,” he said.
