Freddie Stowers - Early Life and Induction Into The Army

Early Life and Induction Into The Army

Stowers was born in Sandy Springs, South Carolina, the grandson of a slave. Before the war, he worked as a farmhand. He married a woman named Pearl, with whom he had one daughter, Minnie Lee.

Stowers was drafted into the Army in 1917, and assigned to Company C, 1st Battalion of the segregated U.S. 371st Infantry Regiment, originally part of the 93d Infantry Division (Colored).

While the United States had established permanent African-American military units in 1866, these did not participate in the American Expeditionary Force; a peacetime role as frontier police and cavalry experts was gradually devolving into labor duties, the fate of many black troops in the world wars, despite the protests of some officers and organizations like the NAACP. Some of these "Buffalo Soldiers," as they were nicknamed, did participate in a border skirmish with Mexican troops accompanied by German military advisors near Nogales; see Buffalo Soldiers for more information.

By contrast, Stowers was part of a new division that, by the end of the war, included a commissioned African-American officer, and saw sustained combat. Due to compromises with the institutional racism of the day, this combat did not take place under American command: Although his unit arrived in France as part of the American Expeditionary Force, Stowers' regiment, like the others in the division, was seconded to the 157th French Army "Red Hand Division," badly in need of reinforcement, under the command of the General Mariano Goybet.