March 5, 2021
Nineteen-year-old Hosea Williams, an infantry gunner, was in a foxhole in France with 13 other soldiers when a German shell hit. Everyone was killed but Williams.
As staff sergeant in an all-black infantry unit attached to Gen. George S. Patton’s Third Army, Williams was one of more than 2.5 million African-American men who enlisted in segregated units and served with distinction and honor. Williams laid in that foxhole for two days with devastating injuries, until an ambulance could reach him. He spent 13 months in a veterans hospital and was discharged with a permanent limp.
After arriving in New York at the end of the war, Williams headed home to Georgia, dressed in full uniform, wearing his medals, including a Purple Heart. The bus stopped in Americus, Ga., and Williams was very thirsty. But it was 1945 in the segregated South, and blacks were not allowed in the bus station, not even decorated WWII soldiers. Williams didn’t like coffee, but he bought a cup,