Davis, Benjamin O., Sr.

Source:

 African American National Biography

Davis, Benjamin O., Sr.

(28 May 1880–26 Nov. 1970),

U.S. Army officer, was born Benjamin Oliver Davis in Washington, D.C., the youngest of three children of Louis Patrick Henry Davis, a messenger for the U.S. Department of the Interior, and Henrietta Stewart, a nurse. Benjamin attended the Lucretia Mott School, one of Washington's few integrated schools, and then the segregated M Street High School. Impressed in his interactions with Civil War veterans and black cavalrymen, Benjamin joined the M Street Cadet Corps, earning a commission in the all-black unit of the National Guard for his senior year.

Although he had taken courses at Howard University during his senior year of high school, and despite his parent's objections, Davis chose a military career over college. He enlisted during the Spanish-American War in 1898 and joined the all-black Eighth U.S. Volunteer Infantry in Chickamauga, Georgia. A year later Davis reenlisted in the regular army. He served with the all-black Ninth Cavalry in Fort Duchesne, Utah, and quickly advanced to sergeant major, the highest rank for an enlisted soldier. In 1901 he underwent two weeks of officers' exams, becoming, along with John E. Green, one of two black candidates to earn a commission at a time when Charles Young (West Point class of 1889) was the only African American officer in the U.S. armed forces. Other than Young, West Point's only other black graduates, Henry O. Flipper (class of 1877) and John Alexander (class of 1887), were, respectively, dishonorably discharged and dead. The next African American to graduate from West Point was Davis's son, in 1936.

Davis's first service as a commissioned officer was with the Ninth Cavalry in the Philippines, after which he was transferred to the Tenth Cavalry in Fort Washakie, Wyoming. He returned to Washington in 1902 to marry his childhood friend Elnora Dickerson. In 1905, following the birth of the couple's first child, Olive, and his promotion to first lieutenant, Davis was made professor of military science and tactics at Wilberforce College in Ohio. After serving as military attaché to Liberia from 1909 to 1911, Davis was reassigned to the Ninth Cavalry at Fort D. A. Russell, Wyoming. Davis's next detail, patrolling the United States–Mexican border in Arizona, necessitated sending his family to Washington within a year of the birth of his son, Benjamin O. Davis Jr., in 1912. Following his promotion to captain in 1915, Davis returned to Wilberforce and to family life. The reunion, however, was short-lived; Elnora died in 1916 several days after the birth of their third child, Elnora.

When Davis was assigned the command of a supply troop in the Philippines in 1917, he sent his children to live with his parents in Washington. Two years later he married Sadie Overton, a Wilberforce teacher. After World War I, Davis, now a lieutenant colonel, taught at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama from 1920 to 1924. His next assignment was as instructor of the 372nd Infantry of the Ohio National Guard, a newly reorganized all-black unit. After four years, he was again transferred to Wilberforce for a year.

Davis became increasingly frustrated with teaching posts that undervalued his expertise and with assignments incommensurate with his rank. While the army routinely promoted Davis, he was assigned to noncombat positions, where he would not be in command of white personnel. He had spent World War I far away from the action and was repeatedly denied opportunities for more active duty. “I am getting to the point where I am beginning to believe that I've been kept as far in the background as possible,” Davis wrote to Sadie in 1920 (Fletcher, 54). Adding to his dissatisfaction was the social ostracism the Davises encountered from other military families. Davis was certainly aware that, in 1920 alone, more than seventy black World War I veterans had been lynched.

In 1930 Davis was promoted to colonel, becoming not only the highest ranking African American soldier in U.S. history, but—because John Green had retired in 1929—the only black officer in the U.S. Army. Despite repeated efforts to land a leadership position, Davis was reassigned to the Tuskegee classroom from 1930 to 1937. Davis's first high-profile appointment as colonel—escorting mothers and widows of slain World War I soldiers to European cemeteries in the summers of 1930 through 1933—was the result of self-promotion. “Let a colored officer,” he successfully lobbied, “look after colored gold star mothers. … As you know I have traveled over the battlefields. I have a speaking knowledge of French” (Fletcher, 71). After another brief transfer to Wilberforce, Davis was finally put in charge of troops in 1938, when he was appointed regimental commander and instructor of the all-black 369th National Guard Infantry in New York City. Davis spearheaded the conversion of this service unit to an antiaircraft regiment, a move received by the black community as an indication that blacks could and should serve in all branches of the military.

In October 1940 Davis was promoted to brigadier general, becoming the first African American general. The timing of Davis's appointment, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, just days before the 1940 presidential election, reflects pressure from African American leaders. When Davis's name did not appear on the list of proposed promotions circulated in September, the African American press responded—“Pres. Appoints 84 Generals, Ignores Col Davis” headlined the New York Age.

Roosevelt had signed the Selective Training and Service Act (1940), establishing the first peacetime draft in U.S. history, and although it included an antidiscrimination clause and the potential for expanded roles for African American soldiers, the legislation maintained segregation. Agitation by African American leaders, especially A. Philip Randolph, helped secure Davis's promotion and other changes, including the establishment of a flight training program at Tuskegee (launched in January 1941), the appointment of Judge William Henry Hastie as civilian aide to the Secretary of War, and the inclusion of an African American on the Selective Service board.

Davis retired in June 1941 but was immediately recalled to active duty and assigned to the Office of the Inspector General in Washington, D.C., as an adviser on racial matters. As was often the case, racial discrimination began close to home. Davis arrived at his new office to find two colonels refusing to make room for his desk. Because there were no facilities open to blacks at the state department, Davis ate lunch at his desk while he worked to support the promotion and improve the morale of black soldiers. Davis investigated complaints of racial discrimination, including the assignment of inferior officers to black units, the banning of black soldiers from army base facilities, and incidents of racial violence. Although appointed a member of the War Department's Advisory Committee on Negro Troop Policies in 1942, Davis's recommendations—which included assigning African American officers to command black troops, discontinuing the policy of segregating blood and plasma, gradually removing black soldiers from southern posts, better supervision and racial integration of military police, desegregating base entertainment facilities, and instituting a mandatory course on racial relations and black history—were routinely omitted from final committee reports.

At the end of 1944, in response to a severe shortage of combat soldiers, Davis, then adviser to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, drafted a plan using black soldiers as replacements in all-white units. Although Eisenhower refused Davis's suggestion of assigning soldiers based on “need not color,” he allowed black soldiers to be grouped into replacement platoons for white companies. Davis's job included the production of public relations and educational materials related to issues of race, the most significant of which, The Negro Soldier (1944), was produced by the U.S. Army film unit run by Frank Capra. This film, which includes references to the history of African American soldiers and prominent blacks, was shown to all incoming soldiers. Davis was instrumental in arranging for the film to be released to the general public and for the production of a sequel, Teamwork (1946).

The longer he lived abroad, the more vocal became Davis's opposition to the army's segregationist policies. In a memo dated 9 November 1943, he lamented the difficulties facing the black soldier “in a community that offers him nothing but humiliation and mistreatment. … The Army, by its directives and by actions of commanding officers, has introduced the attitudes of the ‘Governors of the six Southern states’ in many of the 42 states” (Redstone Arsenal Historical Information papers). Davis was clear in his testimony before a 1945 congressional committee: “Segregation fosters intolerance, suspicion, and friction” (Fletcher, 147). Davis's unprecedented visibility—there was even a story about both Benjamin Sr. and Jr. in True Comics in 1945—drew fire from those who criticized what they considered Davis's accommodationist approach to combating discrimination within the army.

In 1945 Davis was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for his work “on matters pertaining to Negro troops.” A year later he was reassigned to the Office of Inspector General and focused on the army's postwar policy regarding black soldiers. The results of integrating the replacement program were encouraging; of the 250 white soldiers queried, 77 percent answered “Yes, have become more favorable towards colored soldiers since having served in the same unit with them” (U.S. Army report, 3 July 1945).

At a ceremony presided over by President Harry S. Truman in the White House Rose Garden, Davis retired on 14 July 1948 after fifty years of service. Twelve days later, President Truman issued Executive Order 9981, which established “equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin.” The last racially segregated unit was abolished in 1954. Davis, who died of leukemia, is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. In 1997 a commemorative U.S. postage stamp was issued in his honor.

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