Benjamin Oliver Davis Jr. was born in Washington, D.C. on December 18, 1912, the second of three children born to Benjamin O. Davis Sr. and Elnora Dickerson Davis.
His father was a U.S. Army officer and at the time was stationed in Wyoming serving as a lieutenant with an
all-white cavalry unit.
Benjamin O. Davis Sr. served 41 years before he was promoted to brigadier general in October 1940. Elnora Davis died from complications after giving birth to their third child (Elnora) in 1916.
At the age of 13, in the summer of 1926, the younger Davis went for a flight with a barnstorming pilot at Bolling Field in Washington, D.C. The experience led to his determination to become a pilot himself. After attending the University of Chicago, he entered the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York in 1932.
He was sponsored by Representative Oscar De Priest of Chicago, at the time, the only black member of Congress. During the four years of his Academy term, Davis was racially isolated by his white classmates.
They hoped that this would drive him out of the Academy. The silent treatment had the opposite effect. Nothing was going to stop him from becoming a pilot. Not his white classmates refusing to be his roommate.
Or being banned from an all-white officers’ club, even though he was an officer himself. Or being rejected from the Army Air Corps, an early version of the Air Force, because he was African American.
Until the late 1940s, the U.S. military was segregated, meaning that black and white soldiers served in separate units. Even though African Americans like Davis could join the military, they weren’t allowed to become pilots.
But in 1941—the year the United States entered World War II—the Tuskegee Army Air Field began training African Americans as military pilots.
Davis was part of the first graduating class and immediately given a command of a unit of all-Black pilots; he later commanded an even larger group. His men bravely flew into enemy territory in Germany and Italy, successfully completing many dangerous missions.
Known as the Tuskegee Airmen, the African-American pilots proved that they were just as skilled as white pilots. During the war, the airmen commanded by Davis compiled an outstanding record in combat against the Luftwaffe.
They flew more than 15,000 sorties, shot down 112 enemy planes, and destroyed or damaged 273 on the ground at a cost of 66 of their own planes and losing only about twenty-five bombers.
Davis himself led dozens of missions in P-47 Thunderbolts and P-51 Mustangs. He received the Silver Star for a strafing run into Austria and the Distinguished Flying Cross for a bomber-escort mission to Munich on June 9, 1944.
Thanks to Davis’ leadership and his pilots’ success, the military now understood that allowing Black and white soldiers to serve together was the right thing to do.
In 1948, President Harry Truman signed an executive order to integrate the armed forces. The man who helped draft a report on how the Air Force should accomplish that? Benjamin O. Davis, Jr.
At the time of Davis’ retirement, he held the rank of lieutenant general, but on December 9, 1998, President Bill Clinton awarded him a fourth star, raising him to the rank of full general.
Davis, who had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, died at age 89 on July 4, 2002 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. He was interred at Arlington National Cemetery on July 17 with wife Agatha who had died in March the same year. A Red Tail P-51 Mustang, similar to the one he had flown in World War II, flew overhead during his funeral service.
Bill Clinton said: “General Davis is here today as proof that a person can overcome adversity and discrimination, achieve great things, turn skeptics into believers; and through example and perseverance, one person can bring truly amazing change.”
Davis’ influence on equal rights for soldiers lives on, even after his death.
(nationalgeographic.com)
