One of the people in my life I am most honored to have met was Lt. Gen. Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., who was the commanding officer of the Tuskegee Airmen. He was long retired when I met him; he lived across the street from me in the 1980s. I met him through his wife Agatha who was a Democratic election judge in my election district when I was a Democratic Committeeman. Lt. Gen. Davis campaigned for Walter Mondale in 1984; I think he may have been a Democratic National Convention delegate. Later he would get a fourth star and be promoted to General.
He had been the first African American to attend West Point in almost 40 years; his father was the only African American officer in the US Army at the time and his nomination was sponsored by the only African American in the US Congress, Oscar De Priest from Chicago (a Republican!). Every other cadet at West Point was racist and they gave Cadet Davis the silent treatment, refusing to speak to him for almost the entire time he was a student there. After he was commissioned they prevented him from commanding white soldiers, assigning him to teach at all black Tuskegee Institute. His father had had similar experiences. He tried to join the Army Air Corps but was rejected because of his race; only World War II opened up the opportunity. Then Lt. Col. Davis (promotions happen quickly in wartime) was forced to serve under a white racist and only became the commanding officer at the very end of the war. The pilots were denied admission to all white Officers Clubs and some were arrested and court-martialed for making an issue of it. (This was not unique; Lt. Jackie Robinson, later famous as a baseball player, was court-martialed for refusing a bus driver’s demand to move to the back of a bus — over a decade before Rosa Parks.)
We cannot comprehend the humiliation Gen. Davis must have experienced. He wrote that it made him stronger and more determined. I found him to be an inspiration.