Williams

William Johnson was born on February 11, 1897, in rural Hempstead County, Arkansas --likely in or near Bodcaw Township, where many Black families worked as tenant farmers or sharecroppers in the post-Reconstruction South

. By the time the United States entered World War I in April 1917, William was just 20 years and 2 months old.

The Selective Service Act of May 1917 initially targeted men aged 21 to 31 for the draft, but as the war effort intensified and manpower needs grew, younger men like William were soon drawn in through later registrations and overflow assignments.

Family or local accounts recall him entering service remarkably young -- around 20 years old in the wave of 1917–1918 draftees -- reflecting the urgency that pulled even very young Black men from Arkansas into uniform.

Drafted in the great mobilization of 1917–1918, William trained at the massive Camp Funston (part of Fort Riley) near Manhattan, Kansas. This sprawling cantonment, one of the largest training camps in the country, housed tens of thousands of soldiers, including thousands of African American draftees.

Conditions were harsh: overcrowded wooden barracks with poor ventilation, intense drills, and segregation that placed Black soldiers in separate units under often discriminatory leadership. It was here, amid the dust and close quarters of Camp Funston, that William’s path diverged. As an “overflow” draftee -- part of the surplus of Black recruits funneled beyond the main 92nd Division being organized at the camp -- he was assigned to the 93rd Infantry Division (Provisional).

The 93rd was not a fully formed U.S. division like the 92nd. Instead, its four infantry regiments (the 369th, 370th, 371st, and 372nd) were shipped to France and placed under French Army command, where they earned distinction fighting alongside French troops

. Many Arkansas draftees, including those routed through Camp Funston, filled the ranks of these regiments. William likely trained in basic infantry skills, marksmanship, and trench warfare tactics before crossing the Atlantic. The 93rd’s soldiers--often called “Harlem Hellfighters” in reference to the famous 369th --faced combat in grueling sectors like the Meuse-Argonne Offensive while enduring the dual burdens of war and racism

Like so many in his generation, William survived the fighting only to be struck down by a silent killer. He contracted pulmonary tuberculosis during his U.S. Army service, almost certainly in the overcrowded barracks and training environments of Camp Funston or similar camps.

TB spread rapidly among soldiers due to close living quarters, exhaustion, malnutrition, and limited medical screening -- disparities were even more pronounced for Black troops. Discharged after the Armistice of November 11, 1918,

William returned to Arkansas weakened. He died on April 10, 1921, in Bodcaw Township, Hempstead County, at the age of just 24. His Arkansas Death Certificate #325 listed pulmonary tuberculosis as the cause, explicitly noting it was contracted while in the Army.

William’s connection to the Barling/Massard Creek area appears to stem from deeper familial ties that reached back to the antebellum South. His maternal grandmother, Marrietta “Mama” Christian, was born on May 17, 1846, on a large cotton plantation near Bridge Port, Mississippi.

Like so many Black women of her generation, she came of age under the brutal realities of chattel slavery on Mississippi soil. After emancipation, she made the journey westward with her family, eventually settling in Arkansas during the turbulent post-Reconstruction years.

There she raised her daughter--William’s mother--amid the harsh world of tenant farming and sharecropping that defined rural Black life in Hempstead County.

She carried with her the living memory of slavery on a Mississippi cotton plantation and the hard-won freedom that followed.

Family accounts suggest she was a stabilizing presence in the household, helping to anchor the family through the poverty and uncertainty that shaped William’s early years. Her long life, spanning from the final decades of legal slavery into the Jim Crow era, represents the multi-generational arc of struggle and resilience that William inherited when he was drafted into the Great War at just twenty years old.

By the time her grandson William was born in 1897 in Bodcaw Township, Mama Christian was already in her early fifties and had moved to post-Reconstruction Sebastian County..

The segregated community in which she lived out her days along Massard Creek was given the unfortunate place name of "Nigger Hill" sometime in the late 19th century and remained how the area was referred to--even on maps--until the late 1930's.

William Johnson was laid to rest in the small Pleasant Hill Cemetery (historically known as Negro Hill African American Cemetery) just off Highway 22 near Barling in Sebastian County --- a modest burial ground serving the rural Black community. Unfortunately, for years the cemetery and a nearby church

As a World War I veteran, he is eligible for a military headstone, a fitting recognition for his service that has yet to be placed.

His story is one of thousands: a young Black man from rural Arkansas who answered the call at a tender age, trained amid the vast plains of Kansas, served in a segregated division that proved its valor under foreign command, and ultimately paid with his health and life.

Unfortunately, like so many other Black soldiers from his era, was never afforded a proper military headstone after his death.

A (see artist rendition) of that monument deserves to be placed in the Fort Smith National Cemetery along with his remains , if they could ever be successfully retrieved after years of flooding in the area and neglect of the cemetery, which would make that scenario for formal burial almost impossible at this point.

William represents both the patriotism and the profound inequalities faced by African American soldiers in the “War to End All Wars.” Though few personal documents survive, his brief life underscores the human cost borne by Southern Black communities in the early 20th century.