O. Davis had been on foreign military assignments three years and was in the Philippines in 1968 when Dr. King was murdered in Memphis in April and Bobby Kennedy shot dead in Los Angeles two months later.
Yet he must be counted among the fighters for justice and equality.
The tall, disciplined soldier had been breaking down the wall of discrimination for 32 years by demanding at every turn that he and the men he commanded be judged by the content of their character and performance, not the color of their skin.
Silence surrounded Davis the four years he attended West Point, 1932 through 1936. No one spoke to him other than to give a direct order. He lived alone, studied alone, took his meals alone in a dining hall filled with classmates.
The native of Washington, D.C. who grew up in Cleveland, Ohio was handsome, bright and charming, the son of a career military officer. He wanted nothing more than to graduate with good marks and become a 2nd lieutenant in the U.S. Army. His dream was to fly.
He’d barely started his plebe year when he read a bulletin board notice of a “special meeting at the sinks” that evening. The sinks were lavatories in the basement of the dormitory. As he hurried down back steps a voice with a distinctive southern drawl stopped him cold: “What are we gonna’ do about the damn nigra?” The purpose of the meeting was to make life so miserable for Davis he’d quit in frustration. His classmates decided on the “silent treatment,” not a new device to push unwanted cadets out of the academy, but cruelly applied to Davis for being born black.
When Agatha, his fiancé visited, she was included in the silent treatment. The couple kept their eyes on the prize and endured it all. He ranked 35th in his graduating class and applied for flight training. Sorry, Lt. Davis, blacks aren’t eligible for flight training. You are assigned to the infantry.
Ben and Agatha married and traveled to Fort Benning, Georgia. The silent treatment followed them. Ignored by fellow officers and their wives and barred from the officer’s club with the silent acquiescence of the base commander, Ben and Agatha supported each other. Strict segregation in the nearby town of Columbus and visible presence of the KKK discouraged thoughts of an evening stroll outside the gates.
Davis told friends in 1990 the best week he ever spent at West Point was more than 50 years after he graduated. He returned a much decorated Lt. General with Agatha on his arm and smiled with pride and some amusement to see his photo included among outstanding West Point graduates between 1819 and 1950 on, ‘The Great Train of Tradition’.”
He’d long forgiven misguided and bigoted classmates in the 1930s and faculty members that permitted their injustices. But scars of discrimination remained throughout his life. He relished overseas assignments because he was accepted on the basis of his ability and character in other countries and discrimination was less onerous on U.S. military bases far from home.
World War II persuaded our 32nd president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to launch the “Tuskegee Experiment” that for the first time welcomed black flight cadets. The First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, was passenger in the back seat of a Piper Cub flown around Tuskegee by a black pilot, Charles “Chief” Anderson. Her public support discouraged efforts of Southern legislators to kill the program. Davis got his wings in the first class of black aviators in 1941. He commanded the 99th Fighter Squadron and the 332nd Fighter Group in combat over Africa and Italy in 1943. The “Red Tails,” as they were known, lost very few bombers they escorted.
A dwindling number of Tuskegee Airmen still meet today, often at the Air and Space Museum in the nation’s capital where General Davis narrated a film for the “Black Wings” exhibit he helped put together on the mezzanine level.
Davis kept breaking down barriers of discrimination within the military his whole career. In the summer of 1949 he was the first black admitted to the Air War College. He commanded a racially mixed flying unit in Korea and later headed the 13th Air Force in Taiwan. He dreamed equality would one day be the norm and that a special month to honor black achievers would no longer be appropriate.
We elected a mixed race president in 2008 and have begun a new day in America. But we still have a long road to travel to achieve Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream of a colorblind nation. Desegregation’s heroes have often been hidden from view and deserve recognition. Benjamin O. Davis is one of them.
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