Stowers, Freddie

Source:

 African American National Biography

Stowers, Freddie

(1896–28 Sept. 1918),

U.S. soldier and Medal of Honor recipient, was born in Sandy Springs, South Carolina, the son of Wiley and Annie Stowers. Freddie was the oldest son among the Stowers' children, including Minnie, Bettie, Alna, Edie, Mary, Leula, Georgina, Johnye, and three others who died young. The grandson of a slave, Freddie made a living as a farmhand and prior to his service in World War I was married with a daughter, Minnie, named after his oldest sister.

Freddie Stowers was drafted by the army in 1917, and like nearly 3,400 other African Americans called to service in the South was sent to Camp Jackson, South Carolina, in the newly formed 371st Infantry Regiment of the 93rd Division, one of two such units in the army, the other being the 92nd Division, manned by African American recruits and commanded by white officers. The first recruits for the 371st arrived from Florida in August 1917, but the vast majority of them, Stowers included, did not arrive in camp until October, by order of the War Department, until after the year's cotton crop had been harvested. While nearly half of these men were subsequently assigned to labor and support units, Stowers was among about five hundred men who were designated for combat duty and trained at Camp Upton, New York, before being sent to France as part of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) in April 1918. Upon arriving in France, the men of the 371st were quickly assigned to French control and after undergoing further training and being fully reequipped with French rifles, machine guns, and even helmets, were assigned to the 157th French “Red Hand” Division under the command of General Mariano Goybet.

Thus assigned to the French “Red Hand” Division, Freddie Stowers and the men of the 371st Infantry Regiment soon went into action manning the trenches around the area of Verdun at Avocourt and Verrieres for over three months, during which time Stowers rose to the rank of corporal as a member of “C” company and commanded a rifle squad. In September the French division was transferred to take part in one of the last great offensives of the war in the Champagne region. On the first day of fighting, on 28 September 1918, Freddie Stowers and “C” company were ordered to assault Cote 188, a heavily defended hill near the town of Ardeuil. The black soldiers slowly but surely advanced on the Germans defending the hill, withstanding heavy mortar and machine gun fire. Nearly to the top, the Germans signaled their surrender, but this was nothing but a trick; as the black troops approached, the Germans machine-gunned the Americans and within minutes the company suffered the loss of half their men, including many officers. With these losses, command of Company C fell to Corporal Freddie Stowers, and he immediately led an advance on the German gun positions, shouting for his men to follow him. They successfully knocked out the machine gun nest in the first line of trenches and Stowers then regrouped his men and led a charge against a second enemy trench line. During this attack, Stowers was wounded by machine gun fire, but continued on until he was hit again. Though weakened by a loss of blood, Stowers urged his men to continue on and take the German gun position. As Stowers lay dying, his men did just that, taking the hill and driving the enemy to lower ground.

The service of men like Freddie Stowers, Henry Johnson, and Needham Roberts in World War I was important for several reasons; not only were these men decorated for their heroism under fire (Johnson and Roberts were the first American soldiers to be awarded the French Croix de Guerre, Cross of War), but they are also indicative of the fine but forgotten service rendered by African American soldiers in the “Great War.” Sadly, these men received more recognition from the French government than their own country: while the commander of the AEF, General John Pershing, had previously supported the development of black soldiers in the army before gaining high command, he did not support their use in combat units during the war due to the racial conditions then prevailing in the United States and related political considerations. The assignment of black American soldiers to French control was due both to the fact that they were in dire need of men and the fact that the French were well accustomed to using black soldiers in their army raised from among their colonial territories in Africa, mainly Senegal and the Sudan. While General Pershing advised the French not to praise too greatly the achievements of the African American troops under their command, the French ignored him by making numerous awards to them, including a unit citation and the Croix de Guerre to eighty-nine enlisted men of the 371st Infantry Regiment. Upon arriving home, the black soldiers that served overseas found matters even worse; not only was their service at best ignored, or in the worst case deemed a failure, but racial tensions had increased because of fears that returning African Americans would demand greater equality. During the subsequent antiblack race riots that occurred in 1919 in over two dozen American cities, black veterans were often targeted, and some were the victims of lynch mobs.

After his death, Freddie Stowers was buried at the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery along with 133 other men from his regiment and was largely forgotten by all but his family and friends. He was recommended for the Medal of Honor, but the request was not acted on and lay forgotten for over seven decades. This was almost certainly due to the army's racist policies, as no black soldier was awarded the medal during the war. In 1990 Congress directed that the army conduct a review of its award policies from previous wars. As a result of subsequent research, including the discovery of the Medal of Honor recommendation and information collected at the battlefield site where Stowers performed his deeds of heroism, the Army Decorations Board approved a posthumous award of the Medal of Honor for Freddie Stowers. The medal was presented to his surviving sisters, Georgina Palmer and Mary Bowens, by President George H. W. Bush at a White House ceremony on 24 April 1991. Among those in attendance were Freddie Stowers' great-grandnephews, themselves members of the military: Staff Sergeant Douglas Warren and Technical Sergeant Odis Stowers.

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