Veterans joined a bipartisan team of elected officials Tuesday in Albany to condemn the removal of an Army website dedicated to Henry Johnson, a Black man from Albany who became a World War I hero and was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.

The Defense Department unpublished the page, which described the renaming of Fort Polk in Louisiana to Fort Johnson in 2023, as part of its review of "culturally focused Army websites" under President Donald Trump's executive order terminating diversity, equity and inclusion offices, positions and programs in the federal government. 

“We’ve now got an administration that’s trying to get rid of history,” said BJ Costello, a local Vietnam war veteran and U.S.S Slater Board chairman. “We cannot let that happen.” 

Costello joined Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan and other local leaders in condemning the removal of the website, which now shows a “page not found” notification and indicates that content will be reposted after a review.

“Henry Johnson’s legacy is important,” Sheehan said Tuesday, standing beneath a Henry Johnson monument in Washington Park.

“The reason he was fighting with the French was because the Americans did not want to fight with Black people beside them,” Costello explained. “Here we are in 2025 having this conversation, which you would think is long past, but it isn’t,” Costello said.  

Johnson worked at Albany’s Union Station before enlisting in the New York National Guard’s segregated 15th New York (Colored) Infantry Regiment in 1917. He served under French command and became a national hero for valor on the battlefield. The 15th New York later turned into the 369th Infantry Regiment and became known as the "Harlem Hellfighters."

During the Battle of the Argonne Forest on the early morning of May 15, 1918, Johnson, a 130-pound spitfire, singlehandedly held off a large German raiding party, and despite suffering 21 wounds, kept fighting to help rescue a fellow soldier from capture.

“It’s incumbent upon us, those in elected office and those who are not on elected office, to speak up when we see missteps,” said state Sen. Jake Ashby, a Republican and former U.S. Army Reserves captain who said he couldn’t make sense of the “unconscionable” decision to remove such material.  

“I urge the Trump administration to go back and put this back up,” he said. “This is a hero we celebrate, not only here in the city of Albany, in the Capital District and the state of New York, but across the nation.”  

In response to the removal of the website, a spokesperson for the Defense Department referred Spectrum News 1 to a statement recently made by Pentagon Chief Spokesman Sean Parnell.

"Over the past few weeks, we've taken action to identify and archive DEI content from our websites and social media platforms. Without question, this task was an arduous but incredibly important undertaking," he said.

After a decades-long effort by military veterans, elected officials and community members, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Johnson the Medal of Honor, the U.S. military's highest recognition, in 2015.

Years later, Fort Polk, which was named after a Civil War Confederate general, was renamed after Johnson.

Another web page highlighting Johnson as a Medal of Honor recipient remains live. But Costello is skeptical and encouraged all to keep a watchful eye.

“Day after day after day, more unbelievable things are occurring in a country we thought we knew,” he said.