Retired General’s Career Spans History of Military Integration : Race relations: A black flier, thanks to World War II, got in on the ground floor of the Air Force. He sees both risk and reward for minorities in the Gulf War.

Plebe summer, 1932. The U.S. Military Academy, West Point, N.Y.

Dressed in lightweight slacks and short-sleeve shirts, pairs of cadets whirl awkwardly around the floor in their ballroom-dancing class--except for one tall, straight-backed young man who dances alone.

He swims alone, too, and will never receive his Red Cross lifesaving certificate because no one is willing to be his “buddy.” He eats alone, for no matter where he is seated, no one will speak to him.

During his four years at West Point, no one speaks to him except in the line of duty.

Why? Because Cadet Ben Davis is black. In 1932, the U.S. military academies did not welcome racial diversity.

“I couldn’t believe that I would be treated the way I was treated,” retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Benjamin O. Davis Jr. said. “If ever a man went to West Point with ideals, I was it. Boy, did I have ideals! Did I believe in duty, honor, country. Did I believe that cadets were the greatest people on the face of the Earth--I believed all that.”

For a moment it is silent in his apartment overlooking the Potomac, the White House, the Capitol. Just thinking about those days is still so painful that, for years, the idea of reliving them was impossible to contemplate. And that’s what writing an autobiography involved. No matter that he was the first black in this century graduated from West Point, the first black three-star general in the Air Force. To him, mention of such “firsts” represents a segregating, divisive way of thinking.

“There was just too much pain and suffering in my background,” he said. “I didn’t want to have anything to do with it.”

Yet do it he has. Earlier this month, when the 78-year-old Davis stepped spoke at the National Air and Space Museum during its celebration of Black History Month, it was as a man who had unburdened himself of stories he hadn’t wanted to share with his parents. He would share them only with Agatha--Agatha, his wife of more than 50 years. It was she who made him write the book.

When Ben Davis Jr. was young, he had two great passions: pride in the achievements of his father, Benjamin O. Davis Sr., and a desire to fly airplanes. He would honor them both.

Davis Sr. was a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army when his only son was born. His 50-year military career was fraught with a frustration born of the Army’s conviction that a black man could not and should not command white soldiers. Not in combat. Not in peacetime. Not at all.

As his father was moved from black teaching post to black National Guard unit and back again, Davis Jr., his two sisters and (after his mother died) his stepmother would watch that frustration mount and wonder if the world would ever change. (For Davis Sr., recognition did not come until 1940, when, at age 63, President Franklin D. Roosevelt promoted him to brigadier general.)

So in the summer of 1926, when Davis Sr. paid a barnstormer at Bolling Air Force Base $5 to take his son up for a ride, people thought he had lost his mind. “That was a lot of money in those days,” Davis said. “And we never understood it, because he was a close man with a penny.”

Davis Sr. must have understood something about his 14-year-old son. Davis Jr. can no longer remember that flight, but he remembers the incredible feeling of being up in the air looking down on Washington, and his sudden determination to become an aviator.

When, at 17, he was still determined to become a pilot, his parents arranged for him to move to Chicago to be eligible for appointment to West Point. (The only black representative in Congress, Alonzo Parham, was a Republican from Illinois.) By July 1, 1932, he was enrolled at West Point.

There was no reason to assume that the segregated Army would train him to be a pilot. There was no reason to assume that he would escape his father’s frustrations. But Davis knew he was smart and strong, able and ambitious. “As a matter of fact,” Davis said ruefully, “I was fool enough to believe that I could become a cadet officer because I knew I was as good as many of them.”

“If you talk to a good many of the cadets today, they will tell you that what I am relating didn’t happen. The silencing didn’t happen,” Davis said. “And they are technically correct, because silence was imposed by the honor committee of the corps of cadets for violations of honor. Well, I didn’t have any violations of honor.”

When he first arrived at West Point, no one treated him differently--though, admittedly, his room assignment was peculiar. He lived alone in a large room designed for at least two cadets. On the third night he was there, a knock on his door alerted him to a meeting in the basement. When he got there, he realized that the meeting concerned what to do about him. He hastily retreated to his room.

“From that time on, it was that way,” he said. “They agreed among themselves that I was to be treated the way they would treat a ‘nigger’ rather than as a human being. And it was just as though the honor committee had imposed silence upon me as an individual.”

From Sunday night through Saturday noon he was busy with his academic work, athletics, the routine of being a cadet.

“There wasn’t any time for me to sit back and feel sorry for myself,” he said. “Instead, if you can believe it, I was able to develop mechanisms in my own mind of feeling sorry for these misguided young men, who represented the cream of the nation, who were willing to force me out of West Point just because I was black.”

On weekends he ran cross-country, borrowed a horse from the stables or stayed in his room and read. He was excluded from all social events.

“I don’t know what to say about it except that it was a hotbed of racism. There was another black cadet who came along a couple of years after I did. They forced him out. But they couldn’t force me out. I gave them no basis for discharging me. Academically I had no problems. Disciplinary problems, none. I just wasn’t going to be forced out.”

As Davis approached graduation, the superintendent of the academy realized that the Army faced a potential problem. Davis’ grades--he stood 35th in a class of 276--entitled him to select which branch of the service he would enter, but how could they accommodate his desire to be a pilot? There were not any black units in the Army Air Corps.

After conferring with the Chief of Infantry in Washington, the superintendent proposed a “plan for the Army to be saved from me and me to be saved from the Army,” Davis said.

“The superintendent’s plan was neat and intriguing,” said Davis. He was to apply for a commission in the infantry, and in particular at Ft. Benning, where there were black troops and where he could take the company officers’ course. Then he could be eligible for assignment to a base with black National Guard units that was near a fine law school. And then he could resign from the Army and go into politics.

“The only problem,” said Davis, “was that I wanted to fly airplanes.”

Not surprisingly--and only up to a point--things went exactly as the Army planned, except that Davis didn’t take any steps to make it happen.

What changed his future was the need for pilots created by U.S. involvement in World War II. “It was all by chance,” he said. “Political developments caused the War Department to be directed by the President to form the 99th Pursuit Squadron,” the black flying unit he eventually commanded. “And then I went to Tuskegee Army Airfield, where I was trained as a pilot.”

Davis is proud of the black flying men with whom he served at Tuskegee and, in particular, of the success of the all-black 99th Pursuit Squadron and the 332nd Fighter Group he led into combat over North Africa and Italy during the war.

“These two units in combat operations demonstrated that they could perform equally as well as whites,” he said. “So, their actions were terribly important . . . and the (congressional) leadership could stick its neck out because they had confidence that we could perform.”

It was that new-found confidence in black airmen, Davis believes, that enabled the Air Force--created in 1947--to be the first integrated branch of the military. That was May, 1949, when, under the direction of President Harry S. Truman, Air Force Letter 35-3 was issued. From then on, all the men who had been grouped on predominantly white bases in all-black “F squadrons” were reassigned worldwide to white units. Davis is still astounded at the speed with which black airmen were moved “into barracks occupied by white people, and mess halls where white people ate.” A year later, he recalls, there wasn’t a single black unit in the U.S. Air Force.

“It was just like that,” he said, “like night turned to day.”

The striking thing about Davis’ autobiography, “Benjamin O. Davis Jr., American” (Smithsonian Institution Press), is the nonjudgmental tone in which situations of inhumanity, racism and cruelty are described.

“I’m really not mad at anybody,” he said. “I long ago developed the rather calm attitude toward things that happen to me as an individual.

“On the other hand, I don’t have a calm attitude toward the evidence of racism that still exists in the United States. I don’t have a calm attitude about the fact that our government hasn’t improved the lot of minorities. No. I’m complaining about racism. I’m complaining about the attitudes of people in these United States toward their fellow Americans.”

When Davis was questioned about the disproportionate number of blacks in today’s military, he said: “They are in danger where they are. But--and this is one very great big ‘but’--they have a tremendous opportunity to prove themselves and prove to the United States the value of black people to the armed services. And when they do that, they will reap the rewards for their efforts, just as the Tuskegee Airmen reaped the rewards and pointed the way to the integration of the armed services.

“So, yes, there may be disproportionate representation . . . but I think that it should be regarded as an opportunity for service. Because these are all volunteers that we’re talking about, and they are benefiting from being where they are. They receive far better treatment in the armed services of the United States than they can receive in civilian life.”

Although Davis has had a distinguished post-military career--as safety commissioner of Cleveland, in two high-level jobs in the Department of Transportation and on several presidential commissions--he hasn’t been in uniform for 20 years. So it is with astonishment and pride that he views Gen. Colin Powell’s role in the Persian Gulf War.

“I was extremely proud that Colin Powell had been able to impress the people for whom he worked so favorably that he received the appointment. . . . And I looked upon it as a beacon of opportunity for other people. But I won’t say that I wasn’t surprised, because I was. I think it is extremely unusual for a black person, regardless of all capability, to have been appointed chairman of the Joint Chiefs. I hope he is able to get through this war without being badly hurt.”

Davis is worried about the Gulf War. He said it represents a danger to the United States, a danger to George Bush and a danger to the armed forces. He allows himself these very unmilitary reservations because he is no longer in uniform. He considers himself now to be much more of a reader than a doer, with time to reflect on his opinions. For a career military man, he takes a thoughtful view, but Davis is a man whose life was forged on a bedrock of personal character. And no one is going to tell him how to think. He has his own views.

“The sort of thing that happened to us holds you together or takes you apart,” said Agatha Davis. “We’ve always worked together. I’ve always tried to do everything I can for him. He’s always tried to do everything he can for me--and he still does. I don’t think anybody could have a better husband.”

Agatha Scott, a teacher from New Haven, Conn., and Ben Davis were married on June 20, 1939, in the chapel at West Point. The West Point chaplain officiated. “There were no crossed swords,” said Agatha Davis, laughing at the idea. “There wouldn’t have been anybody to hold them.”

Did she have any idea what she was getting into? “It wouldn’t have made any difference,” she said.

They had met at a New Year’s Eve party in New York, during his first leave after having been at West Point for a year and a half. “There was this handsome guy in a West Point uniform,” she recalled. “Everybody at that dance knew he was there, and all the girls in the place were after him. But I decided he was going to pay attention to me , so I took a whole lot of confetti and stuck it down his stiff collar.”

They met again the next year, right before Christmas, in New York. She had made plans--parties and dances for which she already had an escort, a dentist from York, Pa. “I told him some of the things I was going to do. And he said, “Could I take you?’ And I said, “I can’t do that because that wouldn’t be very nice, but if you want to go and ask him, it’s all right with me.’ So he went and asked him if it was all right. And I felt real silly, but I didn’t care. It started there, and from then on, it was just the two of us.”

At Ft. Benning after their marriage, life was difficult. His first attempt to call on his commanding officer, in keeping with Army etiquette, was met with a locked screen door. Soon afterward, their application for membership in the officers’ club (which had been suggested by the adjutant) was indirectly rejected. Their check was returned with the explanation that because Davis had not used the club, it was assumed he was not interested. “I lost a lot of respect for the military there,” he said. “It went on that way for two years.”

Overseas--in Japan, Taiwan, Germany, Korea, the Philippines--as he made his way up through the ranks, it became easier. “We made wonderful acquaintances and friends once we got overseas,” said Agatha Davis. “We still have them. Any nationality, any race--overseas, people never thought of you as being anything but an American. They didn’t care what you were.”

At home, people cared. And on more than one occasion, Agatha Davis let people know what she thought of them. Davis said this made it easier for him. “She expressed things I may have felt but didn’t think I could say. Military people never spoke on matters of the day, but Agatha never held her tongue.”

Could he have managed any of it--the silence, the career, the book--without her? “I have to say I couldn’t,” he said. “She was a person I could confide in. I told her everything that was going on. She was the only one I told.”

And now he has told everyone else. Since the completion of the book, which was a joint project, Agatha Davis has noticed that her husband speaks his mind more freely. It is as if the silence has finally been lifted.

Said Ben Davis with pride: “I feel better, having written this book.”