(I just did a search):
Posted on Sun, Jul. 07, 2002
Tuskegee Airmen's commander dies
Benjamin O. Davis Jr. broke color barriers, had ties to Cleveland
By Richard Goldstein
New York Times
Lt. Gen. Benjamin O. Davis Jr., who broke color barriers and shattered racial myths as the commander of the Tuskegee Airmen, the pioneering black fighter pilots of World War II, died Thursday. He was 89.
Davis died in Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, the Air Force said.
Davis, a son of the Army's first black general, Benjamin O. Davis Sr., was the first black cadet to graduate from West Point in the 20th century and one of the first black pilots in the military. His leadership of the United States' only all-black air units of World War II helped speed the integration of the Air Force, and in 1954 he became its first black general.
Born in Washington, Davis attended Cleveland's Central High School while his father taught in Ohio. He graduated first in his class in 1929 and attended Western Reserve University in Cleveland for two years.
Like his father, Davis struggled against racism. He was ostracized at West Point and then was barred from commanding white troops and turned away from segregated officers' clubs in the war years.
A trim 6 feet 2 inches with a sometimes piercing gaze, a deep voice and an erect military bearing, Davis carried himself with the knowledge that the stakes were huge: The wartime performance of his men was closely watched by officials who believed that blacks lacked the intelligence and courage to succeed as pilots.
``All the blacks in the segregated forces operated like they had to prove they could fly an airplane when everyone believed they were too stupid,'' Davis said years later.
The airmen commanded by Davis compiled an outstanding record in combat against Germany's Luftwaffe in the European theater in World War II. They shot down 111 enemy planes and destroyed or damaged 273 on the ground at a cost of more than 70 pilots killed in action or missing. They never lost a U.S. bomber to enemy fighters on their escort missions.
As the leader of dozens of missions in P-47 Thunderbolts and P-51 Mustangs, Davis was highly decorated, receiving the Silver Star for a strafing run into Austria and the Distinguished Flying Cross for a bomber-escort mission to Munich, Germany.
Davis went on to serve in posts abroad after the war. He gained the three stars of a lieutenant general in May 1965, when he was the chief of staff for U.S. forces in South Korea.
In 1998 President Clinton awarded him a fourth star.
Davis retired from the military in 1970, and then became director of public safety in Cleveland, serving in the administration of Carl Stokes, the first black mayor of a large U.S. city. He stayed in the post for only six months before resigning over what he saw as the Stokes administration's failure to deal firmly with black extremist groups.
He then joined the U.S. Department of Transportation, directing anti-hijacking efforts. In his five years with the department, he supervised the sky marshal program, security measures at airports and programs to curb cargo thefts.
A Cleveland public school named in his honor, Benjamin O. Davis Aviation High School, was believed to have the nation's only aviation mechanics course until it closed in 1996.
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The Associated Press contributed to this story.
