Benjamin Davis
1912

Davis, Benjamin O., Jr. (b. December 18, 1912, Washington, D.C.), first African American general of the U.S. Air Force.

Benjamin Oliver Davis Jr., was the son of Elnora and Benjamin Oliver Davis, Sr., the first black general of the U.S. Army. After living on a number of military bases during his childhood, Davis entered a predominantly white high school in Cleveland. He was elected president of his class and went on to attend Cleveland's Western Reserve University. He transferred to the University of Chicago but hoped to enroll in the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. At the time, the academy actively discouraged blacks from applying. With the help of black Chicago Congressman Oscar DePriest, however, Davis took the entrance examinations and entered the academy in 1932.

At West Point, Davis, because he was black, was subjected to four years of a campaign called silencing: no one ate with him, roomed with him, answered his questions, or spoke to him unless issuing an order. He nonetheless graduated in the top 15 percent of his class and became West Point's first African American graduate since Reconstruction. Because of his high class rank, he should have been allowed to choose which branch of service to enter; however, when he requested the Air Corps (then a branch of the Army), he was told that there were no black squadrons and the government had no intention of assigning a black lieutenant to a white squadron. Instead he and his new bride, Agatha Scott, were sent to Fort Benning, Georgia. They found base facilities there and in future postings racially segregated, and Davis was assigned several insignificant duties.

In the early 1940s President Franklin D. Roosevelt, seeking wider support among African Americans, approved several changes that gave blacks greater roles in the armed services. One such change was the promotion of Benjamin Davis, Sr., as the first black general. Another was allowing African Americans into the Air Corps on an experimental basis. A training program for black pilots was established at the historically black Tuskegee Institute and Benjamin Davis Jr., was ordered to command the first class. Completing the training in 1942, Davis was given charge of the 99th Pursuit Squadron, the first black air unit, and sent the following year to North Africa to serve in World War II. Davis and his pilots were given little of the introductory training that young white pilots received from veterans at the front. Most of the 99th's missions in North Africa were routine and combat-free, allowing Davis's superior officers to report to Washington that black pilots were not as capable as whites.

After the war Davis argued for an end to segregation in the armed services, which Harry S. Truman promulgated in 1948. Davis then helped the Air Force, which had separated from the Army, design plans for desegregating its bases. During the Korean War, he commanded a racially integrated flying unit and was afterward promoted to brigadier general, the first black to reach that rank in the Air Force. In 1965 he became the first African American in any military branch to reach the rank of lieutenant general. In 1970, after commanding the 13th Air Force in the Vietnam War, he retired.

Beginning in mid-1970 Davis served as an assistant secretary at the Department of Transportation under President Richard M. Nixon. Overseeing the development of airport security and highway safety, Davis was one of the chief proponents of the 55-mile-per-hour speed limit to save gas and lives. He retired from the Department of Transportation in 1975 and in 1978 served on the Battle Mounuments Commission, on which his father had served decades before. In 1991 he published his autobiography.