Military career Henry Johnson biographical cartoon by Charles Alston, 1943. Such as a chauffeur, soda mixer, and as a redcap porter at the Albany Union Station on Broadway. He moved to Albany, New York when he was in his early teens and worked various jobs. Johnson said that he was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on July 15, 1892, when he registered for the World War I draft, but used other dates on other documents and may not have known the exact date of his birth. The post was renamed in Johnson's honor in a ceremony on June 5, 2023. On May 24, 2022, The Naming Commission recommended that Fort Polk in Leesville, Louisiana, be renamed Fort Johnson after Henry Johnson, rather than its previous namesake, Confederate General Leonidas Polk. Previous efforts to secure the Medal of Honor failed, but in 2015 he was posthumously honored with the award. military awarded him the Distinguished Service Cross. He was finally awarded the Purple Heart in 1996. There was a long struggle to achieve awards for him from the U.S. Johnson died poor and in obscurity in 1929. soldier in World War I to receive that honor. In 1918, the French awarded Johnson with a Croix de guerre with star and bronze palm.

On June 2, 2015, he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor by President Barack Obama in a ceremony at the White House. On watch in the Argonne Forest on May 14, 1918, he fought off a German raid in hand-to-hand combat, killing multiple German soldiers and rescuing a fellow soldier while suffering 21 wounds, in an action that was brought to the nation's attention by coverage in the New York World and The Saturday Evening Post later that year. William Henry Johnson (circa J– July 1, 1929), commonly known as Henry Johnson, was a United States Army soldier who performed heroically in the first African American unit of the United States Army to engage in combat in World War I.

369th Infantry Regiment, New York National Guard

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