U.S. First Army soldiers held a ceremony in honor of Waverly Woodson Jr. on the beach where he came ashore and was wounded, and where hundreds of American soldiers were killed by withering fire in the June 6, 1944, landings in Normandy, northern France.

The Distinguished Service Cross is the second-highest honor that can be bestowed on a member of the U.S. Army and is awarded for extraordinary heroism.

The medal was awarded posthumously to Woodson this month — just ahead of the 80th anniversary of D-Day — following years of lobbying for more recognition of his achievement on that fateful day.

U.S. First Army Maj. Gen. William Ryan gently placed the World War II-era medal on the sand, close to the spot where Woodson is thought to have come ashore on the now-peaceful beach that on D-Day was raked by German machine-gun and artillery rounds before U.S. forces finally captured it and started pushing inland.

The soldiers all saluted, still and quiet under blue skies, when U.S. First Army Command Sgt. Maj. Christopher Prosser gave the order to present arms.

U.S. First Army historian Capt. Kevin Braafladt explained to the soldiers that the next step would be the medal’s presentation to Woodson’s widow, 95-year-old Joann. It will be given to his family in a ceremony later this summer.

“We want to be able to say that this medal came from Omaha Beach and was at the site of Woodson’s actions,” Braafladt said.

The soldiers delicately passed the medal from hand-to-hand, feeling its weight and inspecting it.

The ceremony moved U.S. First Army Staff Sgt. Aaron Williams, who is Black, to tears.

“Understanding my position as an African American and to learn about Cpl. Woodson and everything he experienced here on Omaha and in Normandy is very touching to me, and to be here in the exact spot, it’s just historic,” Williams said. “It’s very, very touching.”

Woodson was just 21 years old when his First Army unit, the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, took part in the Allied operation that helped precipitate Adolf Hitler’s downfall 11 months later.

Woodson’s battalion, the only African American combat unit on Omaha that day, was responsible for setting up high-flying inflatable balloons to prevent enemy planes from buzzing over the beach and attacking the Allied forces.

At a time when the U.S. military was still segregated by race, about 2,000 African American troops are believed to have taken part in the D-Day invasion.

Woodson died in 2005, at age 83, and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

His son, 66-year-old Stephen Woodson, fought back tears Friday when The Associated Press described the ceremony to him by phone.

“I’ve got chills,” he said. “My father is receiving a lot of attention that is long overdue. It’s almost beyond words for me to describe how important this is for my family.”

Waverly Woodson himself spoke to the AP in 1994 about how his landing craft came under intense fire from German gunners as it approached the beach.

“The tide brought us in, and that’s when the 88s hit us,” he said of the German 88 mm guns. “They were murder. Of our 26 Navy personnel there was only one left. They raked the whole top of the ship and killed all the crew. Then they started with the mortar shells,” Woodson said in the interview.

For the next 30 hours he treated 200 wounded men while under intense small arms and artillery fire before collapsing from his injuries and blood loss, according to accounts of his service. At the time he was awarded the Bronze Star.

Although 1.2 million Black Americans served in the military during World War II, none was among the original recipients of the Medal of Honor awarded in the conflict.

The Army commissioned a study in the early 1990s to analyze whether Black troops had been unjustly overlooked during an era of widespread racism and segregation in the military. Ultimately, seven Black World War II troops were awarded the Medal of Honor in 1997.

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Associated Press writer Rebecca Santana in Washington contributed to this report.

Former Cpl. Lawrence “Larry” Diggs received early birthday wishes on May 4 from President Joe Biden, Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough, Marine Commandant Gen. Eric Smith and Commander of Africa Command Gen. Michael Langley — the Corps’ first Black four-star general.

“All Marines — myself included — are better for having such fine examples of selflessness to learn from and emulate,” Langley wrote in his letter. “We are a better Corps for everything you’ve done.”

Diggs was one of the more than 19,000 Black Marines who trained at Montford Point, North Carolina, between 1942 and 1949. Although the Montford Point Marines in recent years have received recognition from Congress and the Marine Corps for their trailblazing service, it was a different story during their time in the then-segregated Marine Corps.

For example: Although Diggs served honorably with 1st Marine Division during World War II and participated in the Battle of Peleliu, he left the Marine Corps in 1946 without any awards on his record, according to his friend, Marine veteran Keith Widaman.

After his service in the Corps, Larry Diggs worked for the United States Steel Corporation and then for the U.S. Post Office, according to Widaman.

His son David Diggs, 54, knew since childhood that his father had been in the Marines in World War II. But Larry Diggs didn’t provide many details about his service.

He would share occasional anecdotes about encountering wildlife like crabs or spiders in his foxholes on Pacific Islands, and having to remain quiet as they crawled around, but not about the fighting itself, David Diggs said.

Larry Diggs always was the peacemaker of the household, his son said. He taught David Diggs discipline, such as the importance of wiping the sink after you brush your teeth so you leave it clean for others. He expounded a philosophy of enjoying life’s journeys rather than getting wrapped up in the destination.

But there is one destination Larry Diggs has been excited about for a long time.

“My dad has been talking about looking forward to turning 100 since he turned 80,” David Diggs said.

Widaman, 40, got to know Diggs while a member of the Mizzou Student Veterans Association at the University of Missouri in Columbia. Diggs, who lived nearby, was a fixture at local veterans’ events, Widaman said, and student veterans would help him with his lawn and shrubs.

The first time Widaman, who left the Marine Corps in 2009, came to Diggs’ house, the older veteran looked out at the sky nervously, Widaman recalled. When it began to rain, Diggs excused himself and went outside to take the American flag down from his flagpole.

“You just don’t see that sort of respect for the flag and that level of patriotism anymore,” Widaman said.

In 2019, Widaman reached out to Marine Corps officials to get Diggs, then 95, invited to the commandant’s Marine Corps birthday ball in Washington, D.C.

Widaman said he raised approximately $9,000 online for plane tickets, a hotel, dress blues (Diggs’ own pair was stolen in the 1940s), a noncommissioned officer sword and a tuxedo. The next step was figuring out which medals Diggs had received as a Marine, so the older veteran could wear them to the birthday event, where he was honored as the oldest Marine in attendance.

But the only award Diggs had was the Congressional Gold Medal replica he and other Montford Point Marines had received in 2012.

Widaman told Marine Corps Times he worked with the Marine Corps to secure the awards Diggs’ service merited: the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with 1 bronze star, the World War II Victory Medal, the Navy Occupation Service Medal and a Combat Action Ribbon. None of these were listed on his service record.

Widaman presented the medals to Diggs at the African American History and Culture Museum in Washington, D.C., before the Marine Corps birthday festivities.

“How many men of Montford Point have lived their whole lives and passed away and they never knew that they earned medals from their actions or service in World War II, and their families still don’t know?” Widaman said.

In 2022, when Larry Diggs and his wife, Margie, were staying with David Diggs in Tacoma, Washington, the family read an article about Gen. Michael Langley becoming the first Black four-star general in the Marine Corps.

Margie Diggs suggested to David Diggs, “Wouldn’t it be great if we were able to get a letter from Gen. Langley to recognize your father at his 100th birthday?”

David Diggs decided he would try, but wasn’t sure how, he said. Then he had the idea of getting Widaman involved.

Widaman — a Defense Department civilian who emphasized he acted entirely in a personal capacity — reached out on LinkedIn to retired Gen. Gary Thomas, the former assistant Marine commandant, who pointed him in the right direction. One of Widaman’s friends, who worked in the Pentagon, helped too.

Other people chipped in. Marines from the recruiting station in Chicago volunteered to present the letters from Smith and Langley. The Bolingbrook Golf Club, in the Chicago suburb where Larry and Margie Diggs are living, agreed to host the Diggs family in its event space for free, Widaman said.

In addition to the official letter from Langley was a photo of the general with handwritten birthday wishes.

“You and the rest of the Montford Point Marines plowed the way,” Langley wrote. “Thank you for your service to God, Corps, and Country.”

The letters came as a surprise to Larry Diggs, David Diggs said.

“The combination of hearing it and then being presented with the letter and being able to actually see it and see who it was from was really quite a moment for him,” David Diggs said. “I think he was like, ‘Wow, I never thought or dreamed or even considered that I would be recognized for my 100th birthday by these people.’”

Since the May 4 event, Air Force Gen. CQ Brown, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has sent a letter of his own to honor the Marine veteran’s milestone birthday, which is on Saturday.

Handwritten at the bottom of Brown’s typed letter are five words: “Thanks for paving a way.”

As a small Black girl, she would walk to school through Vicksburg National Military Park — the hilly battlefield where Union and Confederate soldiers fought and died over whether the U.S. would continue allowing slavery in the South.

Union forces won a pivotal campaign to capture the town of Vicksburg and gain control of the Mississippi River in 1863, hastening the war’s end. But during Dukes’ childhood, Vicksburg venerated the Confederacy and ignored the history of Black soldiers who fought for the Union, including her great-great-grandfather, William “Bill” Sims.

“The superintendents and the museum curators — they said we didn’t fight in the Civil War,” Dukes said recently.

The Black soldiers’ valor and service to the country is no longer ignored, thanks to the efforts of historians, park employees and citizens like Dukes. On crisp morning in mid-February, Dukes and her niece, Sara Sims, and four park employees — two of them Black men wearing reproductions of U.S. Army uniforms from the Civil War — placed American flags on 13 graves where a group of recently identified Black soldiers are buried in Vicksburg National Cemetery, which is part of the military park.

A historian working for the military park, Beth Kruse, identified the soldiers through research of military records, newspapers and other sources. Their remains lie beneath white marble headstones carved with numbers rather than names, as are most veterans buried in the cemetery.

In recent years, the National Park Service has broadened how it presents history in parks nationwide. In the Vicksburg military park, which is dotted with more than 1,400 monuments, markers and tablets and is one of the largest tourist attractions in Mississippi, drawing visitors from around the globe, the visitor center now includes information about Black history, and a monument to Black soldiers was dedicated 20 years ago.

Sunlight dappled the graves under a towering magnolia tree during the flag-planting ceremony on Feb. 14. Dukes said the men and other Black Union soldiers were “freedom fighters,” not only for themselves but for all Americans.

“They are not unknowns anymore,” she said. “This is a start. This is good. Let’s put history right.”

The newly identified soldiers had enlisted in the Vicksburg-based 1st Mississippi Infantry (African Descent) as the town was under federal occupation. In early 1864, 18 soldiers and two white officers traveled by boat some 95 miles north along the Mississippi River to Chicot County, Arkansas, to forage for crops to feed people and horses.

On Feb. 14, 1864, at Ross Landing near the town of Lake Village, irregular Confederate troops from Missouri shot the Union soldiers and officers, killing most and leaving some for dead. They used the Union soldiers’ own bayonets to impale the dead and wounded, pinning them to the ground, according to research by Kruse.

Brendan Wilson, chief of interpretation, education and partnerships for Vicksburg National Military Park, said on the 160th anniversary of the gruesome day in Ross Landing that it’s still not known which of the 13 Black soldiers from that massacre is in which specific grave. Records show where the group is buried.

“And now we have their names and can bring those names back to life,” Wilson said.

Kruse is working in Vicksburg through the National Park Service’s Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellows program. She said at least 11 soldiers of the 1st Mississippi Infantry (African Descent) were previously enslaved on southern plantations.

“For these soldiers, it was not abstract ideology,” she said. “They knew what it was to be unfree.”

Vicksburg National Cemetery was established in 1866 and now holds more than 18,000 graves — veterans from six wars and a few former park employees. More than 17,000 of them fought for the Union in the Civil War, including more than 5,500 Black soldiers, designated by the U.S. War Department in 1863 as United States Colored Troops.

Vicksburg is the largest cemetery for Union soldiers and sailors, its dead brought from Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas and other states. Nearly 13,000 are buried as unknown.

About 5,000 Confederate soldiers are buried in a city cemetery in Vicksburg, outside the military park.

Some 80 years after the Civil War ended, Dukes’ father worked in maintenance at the national military park. She said she has always thought the landscape of the former battlefield is beautiful, but when she was young she never saw any of the history there as relevant to the Black community.

“All I know is that the South lost. OK, I did know that,” Dukes said. “But none of the battles like we are learning now. I didn’t feel like it was any connection to Blacks.”

In 2004, Vicksburg National Military Park dedicated a monument honoring the Black soldiers who fought in the Vicksburg Campaign. The troops were pivotal in a Union victory at Milliken’s Bend, Louisiana, along the Mississippi River north of Vicksburg, in June 1863. Robert Major Walker, a historian elected as Vicksburg’s first Black mayor in 1988, proposed the monument in 1999 after spending years doing research and securing money for it.

“Something had to be done to show the involvement of Black folk in the Civil War,” Walker said recently. “So much positive had been left out of the books of history. Everybody needed to know the truth.”

Dukes, whose great-great-grandfather fought at Milliken’s Bend and survived the war, criticizes efforts by some Republican governors, including Florida’s Ron DeSantis and Mississippi’s Tate Reeves, to limit the teaching about slavery and other difficult aspects of U.S. history.

“And I don’t see why the majority of people in America don’t say, ‘No, you can’t do that. Let’s tell it all,’” Dukes said.

Three days after placing American flags in the cemetery, Dukes joined others inside the military park’s visitor center for a libation ceremony, a traditional African religious ritual, to pay tribute to the 20 men killed or wounded at Ross Landing.

Albert Dorsey Jr., a history professor from Jackson State University, read the name of each man — Black and white — as he poured water into a pot of soil and grass, a small chunk of Earth brought indoors for the chilly day:

Pvt. Henry Berry, Pvt. Calvin Cathron, 1st Lt. Thaddeus Cock, Pvt. Howard Dixon, Corp. Fleming Epps, Pvt. Ruffian Epps, Corp. Peter Everman, Pvt. Charles Farrar, Pvt. Henry Ford, Pvt. John Genefa, Pvt. Anthony Givens, Pvt. Richard James, Sgt. Tony McGee, Sgt. Noah Powell, Pvt. Thomas Ransom, 1st Sgt. James Spencer, Pvt. Isaac Stanton, Pvt. Isom Taylor, Corp. Nelson Walker, Pvt. James H. Boldin.

After each name, the audience of about 50 people responded: “Asé,” pronounced ah-SHAY, a word from the Yoruba language spoken in parts of western Africa. It is similar to “Amen,” an affirmation of a life force.

The 13 Black men killed in the massacre were initially buried at Ross Landing, and later interred in the cemetery as unknowns. Three more were wounded and died during or shortly after the Civil War, and also were buried as unknowns. Two others survived until 1918. The two white officers’ bodies had been identified and sent home to Ohio and Indiana for burial during the war.

Kruse told the audience that the Black men who joined the Union Army were “not groveling for inclusion” but actively chose to fight.

“As President Lincoln remarked of the Gettysburg dead,” Kruse said, “we, too, can recognize the men who lay in the hallowed grounds of the Vicksburg National Cemetery, and never forget what they did for freedom.”

Her mother and Johnson were cousins, technically making him her first cousin once removed. But they were close. He and his wife, Hannah, often would come down from New York to stay with her family in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in the summer.

It was strange to her that Johnson, now 101, hadn’t talked about being a Marine until recent years.

“George isn’t a very modest person,” King told Marine Corps Times. “He has that New York swagger.”

In January, King saw a local ABC segment on the Montford Point Marines. That led her to connect with Mallorie Berger, whose grandfather was a Montford Point Marine and who has joined efforts to track down these Marines and their families.

On Feb. 6, Johnson was honored with a bronze replica of the Congressional Gold Medal honoring the first Black U.S. Marines, many of whom served in World War II.

The daughter of former Cpl. Moses Williams, another Montford Point Marine, also received a medal in her father’s honor.

Pamela Y. Williams had long known that Moses Williams was a member of military police in the Marine Corps. But her father, a soft-spoken man, didn’t talk about his experiences in the military. She had heard about Montford Point from a friend whose father also had served there, several decades after he died in 1970 at the age of 44.

Receiving the medal on her father’s behalf left her feeling “overwhelmed and just very, very proud.”

“I can only imagine what types of hardships they had to go through,” Pamela Y. Williams said. “But I know that they had no idea that they were making history — which is exactly what they did.”

Johnson, the other Montford Pointer honored on Feb. 6, now has failing health, according to King. It’s hard to get details from him on his time as a member of military police — though he does sometimes mention transporting prisoners to Alcatraz — and he wasn’t up for an interview with Marine Corps Times.

“When you mention Montford Point, he does light up,” King said.

Leaders of the National Montford Point Marine Association and local politicians attended the ceremony honoring Johnson and Williams, as did the junior ROTC class from Dillard High, Johnson’s alma mater, according to Berger.

“It’s almost like (Johnson) was a star because everybody wanted to take a picture with him,” King said.

Johnson found the ceremony, held at the African American Research Library and Cultural Center in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, “very moving,” according to King.

“It’s hard to believe. It’s very incredible,” Johnson told a local ABC affiliate. “Those that gave it to me and those who made it possible for me to have it.”

King told Marine Corps Times that the presence of two other living Montford Pointers — former Cpl. George McIvory and former Sgt. Allen Williams — and of retired Army Maj. Gen. James W. Monroe, who knows both Johnson’s and Williams’ families, made the ceremony even more special for her cousin.

A trailblazing group of Marines

During the American Revolution, at least 13 of the 2,000 men in the Continental Marines, the forerunner to the Marine Corps, were Black, according to the National Museum of the Marine Corps. But beginning in the last decade of the 18th century, Black men were barred from serving in the Corps.

In June 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order opening all of the military services to Black men. The response from then-Commandant Maj. Gen. Thomas Holcomb was, “If it were a question of having a Marine Corps of 5,000 whites or 250,000 Negroes, I would rather the whites.”

In 1942, following Roosevelt’s order, the Marine Corps established a segregated post for Black Marines at Montford Point near Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. The men had to build the camp from the ground up, and they endured particularly harsh treatment.

By the time Montford Point closed in 1949 amid the desegregation of the military, approximately 20,000 men had served there. Around 2,000 of them saw combat in the 1945 Battle of Okinawa, Japan, alone.

In 2011, President Barack Obama signed a law authorizing a Congressional Gold Medal to be awarded collectively to all the Montford Point Marines.

“Despite being denied many basic rights, the Montford Point Marines committed to serve our country with selfless patriotism,” Obama stated at the time.

To date, the National Montford Point Marine Association has awarded approximately 3,000 medal replicas to Montford Pointers or their families, according to Joe Geeter, a spokesman for the association.

But that’s only a fraction of the Marines who served at Montford Point.

Part of the challenge is that there isn’t a personnel log for these Marines. Only approximately 400 are still alive, according to Geeter. And, Berger said, it’s common for Montford Point Marines not to tell their families about their service in the Corps.

“There was a lot of abuse that happened to them,” she said. “So how do you come home and share those stories with your family that were abused, outside of the rigors of boot camp?”

Berger said she believes many of the Montford Point Marines developed what would now be called post-traumatic stress from their service.

For her part, she didn’t know that her grandfather, former Pvt. Maurice L. Burns Sr., was part of the Montford Point Marines until 2021 — long after his death in 1996. She happened upon an article about Montford Point online, and that prompted her to look through a box of papers she had found when she cleared out her grandmother’s house years ago.

There was her grandfather’s discharge paperwork, along with a letter he had written to his former assistant drill instructor asking for his help in getting the Veterans Administration to compensate him for his serious service-related back pain.

Berger has since worked to raise awareness about Montford Point and to find those who served there and their families.

“Unwittingly and unknowingly, they were civil right activists,” Berger said.

If you believe you or a loved one deserves recognition for serving as a Montford Point Marine, contact the National Montford Point Marine Association by emailing Info@montfordpointmarines.org or one of the regional contacts listed on its website. Include your full name, mailing address and phone number; if you are reaching out on behalf of a Montford Pointer, also include his full name.

President Joe Biden telephoned retired Army Col. Paris Davis on Monday “to inform him that he will receive the Medal of Honor for his remarkable heroism during the Vietnam War.”

The White House also said Biden told Davis that he looks forward to hosting him at the White House. A date for the medal ceremony was not immediately announced.

Davis was recommended for the Medal of Honor after he distinguished himself on June 18, 1965, during a pre-dawn raid on a North Vietnamese army camp in Bong Son. A major enemy counterattack followed and wounded every American there.

Davis, who retired as a colonel in 1985, repeatedly sprinted into an open rice paddy to rescue each member of his team, using his pinkie finger to fire his rifle after an enemy grenade shattered his hand, according to the Army Times. His entire team survived the battle.

The paperwork recommending Davis, who is now in his early 80s, for the Medal of Honor disappeared at least twice, the paper reported. He eventually was awarded a Silver Star Medal, the third-highest military combat medal, but members of Davis’ team have long argued that race was a factor in how his recommendation was handled.

In early 2021, Christopher Miller, then the acting defense secretary, ordered an expedited review of the case. He argued in an opinion column in June 2021 that awarding Davis the Medal of Honor to would address an injustice.

“Some issues in our nation rise above partisanship,” Miller wrote. “The Davis case meets that standard.”

The former soldier was the Army’s first female deep-sea diver and the first Black female deep-sea diver in service.

Crabtree spoke in January at a Martin Luther King Jr. event at Fort Lee, Virginia, recalling just how difficult it was for her to earn the Army diver badge, according to a recent service release.

“I had to prove myself over and over and over again every day,” she said at the event.

The Westchester, New York, native was the only Black person and the only woman among eight soldiers, and more than 20 others, in her 1982 class at the U.S. Navy Deep Sea Diving and Salvage Training Center at Panama City Beach, Florida, according to the release. Crabtree was one of only two soldiers and nine sailors to earn the coveted diver badge.

It had been less than a decade since Donna Tobias became the Navy’s first female deep-sea diver in 1975, according to Naval History and Heritage Command.

Despite her accomplishment, Crabtree said by entering into a predominately white, male career field she faced a series of discriminatory actions.

After roughly eight months at her first assignment at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, Crabtree said she deployed to South Korea, because she did not fit in with the dive community’s “elitist culture.” Not long after, her military occupational specialty was again restricted only to men.

Today, the dive MOS is once again open to males and females, and the deep sea diving school trains more than 1,200 military divers across the services each year.

At the event last month, Fort Lee commanding general Maj. Gen. Mark T. Simerly introduced Crabtree, noting how she “helped to challenge and remove discriminatory racial and gender-based barriers.”

The late Master Chief Petty Officer Carl Brashear, who in 1954 became the sea service’s first Black master diver, also helped pave the way for future generations of divers and Black service members. His son, retired Chief Warrant Officer 5 Phillip Brashear, reflected earlier this week on his father’s legacy to the crew of the Wasp-class amphibious assault ship Iwo Jima.

“In the words of my father, it is not a sin to get knocked down. It is a sin to stay down,” Phillip Brashear, said at the Black History Month event, The Virginian-Pilot reported. His father’s extraordinary journey was featured in the 2000 film “Men of Honor.”

For Crabtree, who shared in her speech that she knows what it is like to be hated because of her race and for being a woman, there has been a considerable change for good over the last few decades, but there is still much more to be done.

Staff Sgts. Lamar Riddick and Nicholas Feemster were selected as the first two vocalists with the U.S. Army Field Band to serve as full-time rappers.

The pair debuted its lyrical prowess for the service in August during the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo — an annual gathering of international military bands.

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The field band’s communications director Rob Piper told Military Times in a statement that “[t]he Army is always looking for ways to better connect with and represent all Americans. Adding these talented artists, who can do so with passion and authenticity, is not only great talent management, but helps the Army better reflect society as a whole.”

Earlier this week, the band announced the dates for its upcoming spring tour.

“Hip-hop music itself is just a storytelling vehicle, and honestly if you just take that aspect of it … you can apply it to really anything,” Feemster told Forces News at the Edinburgh tattoo. “We’re here to tell stories for veterans, we’re here to tell stories and connect the American people to our armed forces.”

During a difficult recruiting season last year, career opportunities like this have this opened new doors for soldiers with unique talents.

Riddick and Feemster auditioned to serve in this capacity with the band in 2021 before completing basic training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, according to Coffee or Die Magazine.

“I think it was on time,” Riddick recently told Fox Carolina. “I think that the Army is always trying to diversify its efforts and to be transparent and reflect how society looks. And I think that’s very important.”

Both members of the talented duo had separately pursued careers in music and released their own digital albums, Coffee or Die Magazine noted.

The year 1973 marked the end of the draft Army and the transition to the All-Volunteer Force for the U.S. military. This year is both the 50th anniversary of the volunteer force and the 75th anniversary of the presidential directive to desegregate the military.

In 1948, President Harry Truman issued Executive Order 9981 declaring “there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin.”

In the summer of 1972, three Black Army officers—Col. Chris Stevens, Col. Porcher Taylor Jr., and Lt. Col. Jerry Curry—entered the U.S. Army War College. Career officers, each man joined the military during or following World War II. In the segregated military, they experienced the growing pains of integration of Army units. These officers would have been cognizant of the struggles during the American civil rights movement as Black civilians pressed for full rights of citizenship. Each student had enlisted, received a commission and climbed the ranks through assignments, promotions and commands.

In their careers, progress toward equal treatment and opportunity was demonstrated by their selection for command and attendance at professional military education programs of the U.S. Command and General Staff College and the war college. Active-duty Army Lt. Col. Frederic Davison and New York Army National Guard Lt. Col. Otto van Exel became the first Black graduates of the prestigious war college in 1963. A quarter-century after the executive order that led to the desegregation of the military, the war college Resident Class of 1973 counted three leaders of color in its ranks of 228 students.

Stevens enlisted in the Army in 1945. After World War II, he graduated from Hampton Institute, a Historically Black College and University, and was commissioned as a quartermaster officer. A year-long assignment as a procurement officer for the U.S. Element of the Military Assistance and Advisory Group in Laos was followed by two tours in Vietnam that included command of the 64th Quartermaster Battalion (Petroleum) and then service as deputy commander of the 29th General Support Group. Stevens’s assignment prior to attending the war college was as commander of the United States Army Support Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Taylor, Jr. took a slightly different path with enlisted service in the U.S. Navy in the Pacific during WWII. Upon returning home, he studied at the Tuskegee Institute, was commissioned as an Army infantry lieutenant, and was then called to active duty in 1951 during the Korean War. He had assorted postings as an infantry and staff officer, which included assistant professor of military science at Virginia State University, a historically Black university, as well as two tours in Vietnam. While stateside, he commanded a battalion in the U.S. Army Training Center at Fort Jackson, South Carolina and then served as the training center’s deputy chief of staff for personnel. Prior to attending the war college, Taylor commanded I Corps Special Troops Headquarters in Korea and completed a doctoral program in Counselor Education.

Curry enlisted in the Army during the Korean War. He was commissioned as an infantry officer through Officer Candidate School. Curry later became an aviator, serving initial tours of duty in the United States and then overseas in Germany, Korea, and Vietnam. After assorted infantry and aviation assignments, Curry commanded the 2nd Battalion, 30th Infantry in Germany and then served another Vietnam tour as regimental senior advisor for a Vietnamese unit. Prior to attending the war college, Curry was assigned to the Army staff at the Pentagon as an operations research analyst.

Through it all, these three officers persevered as patriots in service to the nation, demonstrating and further developing their talents in the profession of arms. Through their own merit, they prospered and performed well in key assignments. With their war college graduation in June 1973, Curry, Stevens, and Taylor would lead the All-Volunteer Force in warfighting formations and in institutional organizations. Accordingly, they would prove integral in creating the Army of the future in the wake of a strategic failure in Vietnam and diminished trust of the military within American society.

Stevens, as a colonel, commanded the 13th Corps Support Group at Fort Hood, Texas, then completed his uniformed service as commander of the Defense Industrial Supply Center in Philadelphia. In 2005, Stevens was inducted into the U.S. Army Quartermaster Hall of Fame.

Taylor completed his war college assignment as the director of the Inventory and Assessment Branch of the Directorate of Academic Affairs. His final assignment was as the commander and school commandant of the U.S. Army Organizational Effectiveness Training Center at Fort Ord, California. In 1998, Taylor was inducted into the Virginia State University Reserve Officers’ Training Corps Hall of Fame.

Curry was promoted to major general during his 34-year career which included command of 3rd Brigade 8th Infantry Division; Chief of Staff, V Corps in Germany; and assistant commanding general of 4th Infantry Division. He also served in key Pentagon assignments such as military deputy assistant secretary of defense and then acting press secretary for the secretary of defense. His final command was of the U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Command at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Maryland. He was inducted into the Officer Candidate School Hall of Fame in 1979.

The legacy of these three Army officers is well-earned and should be remembered during this Black History Month 2023. Fifty years after their war college graduation, we can see the institutional progress made toward diversity, equity, and inclusion for the U.S. military. That progress was not easily gained, and thus must never be taken for granted.

Colonel (retired) Charles D. Allen culminated a 30-year Army career as Director, Leader Development and is the Professor of Leadership and Cultural Studies in the Department of Command, Leadership, and Management at the United States Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania.

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Col. Charles Young’s career, which stretched from his West Point graduation in 1889 to his forced medical retirement in 1917 that kept him from fighting in World War I, “broke new ground time and again,” said Army Secretary Christine Wormuth in a statement to Army Times confirming the promotion.

An experienced cavalry officer who was wounded in Liberia in 1912, Young was found medically unfit for brigade command — and promotion to brigadier general — in 1917. That’s despite having the recommendation of Gen. John J. Pershing after Young demonstrated his prowess as part of the 1916 U.S. incursion into Mexico.

Wormuth acknowledged that “discriminatory practices not only held him back but forced him into retirement.”

Wormuth expressed her pride that “the Army redressed that wrong [recently] with a long overdue posthumous, honorary promotion.” She will preside over a promotion ceremony “at West Point this spring — where his Army career first started as the Academy’s third Black Graduate.”

The promotion was effective Nov. 1, 2021, Wormuth said, and Young’s descendants learned of it in January.

It comes after decades of lobbying from Young’s descendants and Black organizations like the Omega Psi Phi fraternity, which inducted him as an honorary member in 1912.

“We’re euphoric…It actually happened. It’s almost like a miracle,” said Renotta Young, a member of the officer’s family, in a phone interview with Army Times. “This was a wrong that has finally been corrected.”

Young’s trailblazing career and legacy

Charles Young’s military career began when he earned an appointment to West Point. In 1889, he became the third Black man to graduate and become an Army officer.

He served as one of America’s “buffalo soldiers” in the mostly-black 9th Cavalry in Nebraska and Utah during his early career.

Young’s next assignment was as a professor of military science at Wilberforce University near Dayton, Ohio — one of the nation’s oldest historically-Black institutions. There, he became acquainted with intellectuals like W.E.B. Du Bois.

Young’s family home in Ohio became a National Historic Landmark in 1974. It was added to the National Park Service as the Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers National Monument in 2013.

Young commanded a battalion of Ohio volunteers that remained in the U.S. during the 1898 Spanish-American War, but he deployed to the Philippines in 1901 as the commander of I Troop, 9th Cavalry, where he saw combat against local insurgents.

After returning to the U.S., Young would make history as the first Black superintendent of a national park when he took a short-term assignment as the chief of Sequoia and General Grant National Parks in northern California.

In the decade before World War I, Young completed two squadron commands and served as a defense attaché, first to Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and later to the western Africa nation of Liberia in 1912. He was shot in the arm and wounded there in a firefight between Liberian troops and a rebellious tribe.

Young, by then a major, completed his tour in Liberia in 1915 and returned to the U.S. as a luminary in the Black community. He received the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP in 1916 for his work to help organize and train the Liberian police force. The medal is currently on display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington.

His profile rose even more after his successful stint commanding 2nd Squadron, 10th Cavalry, during the Army’s Punitive Expedition that invaded Mexico in response to deadly raids by guerilla leader Pancho Villa.

Young’s troops defeated a contingent of Villa’s forces on March 31, 1916, and also fought off Mexican government soldiers the following month to save another U.S. cavalry detachment that was surrounded.

After his successes in Mexico, Young was promoted to lieutenant colonel and was on Pershing’s short-list of leaders who deserved brigade command based on their performance in the expedition. He was promoted to colonel — becoming the first Black officer to reach that rank — and underwent a medical exam to evaluate him for command.

The doctors found that his kidneys were likely damaged, but two medical boards recommended that the issues be waived in order to allow the experienced leader to fight in America’s biggest conflict since the Civil War.

War Secretary Newton Baker suggested a medical retirement instead, and the historical record suggests that a Mississippi senator had complained to President Woodrow Wilson about white officers being forced to serve under the command of a Black man. Young’s medical condition represented a convenient way to solve that problem, argued historian David Colley.

Black organizations like the NAACP protested the decision, and in an effort to prove his fitness, Young rode nearly 500 miles on horseback from Wilberforce all the way to Washington in 1918.

He was put back on active duty in November of that year, but ultimately did not receive an overseas command or promotion. He instead led a training unit and then later returned to Liberia in his former role as attaché.

Young fell ill while on duty in Nigeria in late 1921, and he died in Lagos on Jan. 8, 1922. His body was returned to the U.S. around a year later, and he was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Renotta Young, one of his descendants, described him as a “Renaissance man” who “persevered and loved his country.” She helps run a foundation that honors his life and preserves his legacy while supporting youth development and other educational programs.

Renotta Young, whose grandfather was the officer’s first cousin and confidante in Wilberforce, wants to see the Army continue to make progress on improving the experience of Black troops as well. She said in her phone interview with Army Times that “many of the things that he went through still exist,” such as base names that honor Confederate troops and a military justice system that disproportionately punishes Black troops.

She hopes “that this [overdue honor] will spur” Army officials to “recognize that it is for the good of society to identify individuals who can and will make a difference without any aura of discrimination.”

This story contains information that originally appeared in an article by David Colley in the March 2013 issue of Military History Magazine — a sister publication of Army Times.

The career soldiers-turned-amateur-historians, retired Col. Chris Allen and retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, former commander of U.S. Army Europe, say the members of the 1st South Carolina Volunteers of African Descent could be the first Black soldiers to wear Union uniforms, perhaps a year before the famed 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, which was profiled in the acclaimed 1989 film “Glory.”

Allen and Hodges presented their findings during a Jan. 27 virtual presentation for the Army Heritage Center Foundation titled, “The Union’s First Black Regiment and the U.S. Army’s Linkage to the Emancipation Proclamation.”

The two are spearheading efforts to see the unit’s role put in proper historical context for future U.S. Military Academy cadets, Army soldiers and the general public.

More than a mere footnote, the officers see this lost history as a way to further celebrate the role of Black service in the Army. These first soldiers were freed slaves, and some of the leaders with whom they fought were West Point graduates.

Some of their efforts include:

Purchasing a headstone and placing a historical marker for the unit’s color sergeant, Prince Rivers, at his gravesite in Columbia, South Carolina;

Further researching the post-war history of the unit’s members, Improving artifacts of the unit currently held at West Point;

Working with the South Carolina congressional delegation to declare a day of recognition for the unit;

Building a monument in Beaufort, South Carolina;

Establishing exhibits at the Pentagon and the International African American Museum;

Developing a case study for leader development courses in military officer programs.

Establishing an annual commemoration of the unit at its former camp site by the U.S. Army Recruiting Command.

Army Times talked with Allen and Hodges before the presentation about how they came upon the story of the 1st SCVAD and their work to see the unit recognized.

Shortly after Allen retired in 2009 he moved to Beaufort, South Carolina, and a few years later, he bumped into the story of the 1st SCVAD by accident, he said.

He was visiting Naval Hospital Beaufort and while walking the grounds came upon a sign so small he almost missed it.

Labeled “Emancipation Oak,” the sign shared in a few sentences the history of the 1st SCVAD.

It told how the unit had formed in Hilton Head, South Carolina, in May 1862 and how its members had gone into combat in August 1862 before receiving their colors, more than four months before a reading of the Emancipation Proclamation at the spot of the marker on Jan. 1, 1863.

That was also nearly a full year before other Black units formed or even begun recruiting.

“I said, ‘No way, it cannot be true,’” Allen said. “They must have transposed a number.”

He shared his findings with his friend, even taking Hodges to the Emancipation Tree to see the historic site tucked away in an almost hidden corner.

Both Allen and Hodges say their knowledge of such Civil War units mostly comes from a few history classes and the movie “Glory,” decades ago. They emphasize that in this effort they are amateur historians simply trying to share what they’ve found.

But Allen did know that the 54th Massachusetts hadn’t started recruiting until February 1863. He decided to do some research.

What he found was as inspiring a story of Black history in the Army as he could have imagined.

On Nov. 7, 1861, a Union Navy-Army task force seized and occupied “Port Royal,” a deep-water port adjacent to what is now Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, South Carolina, as part of the Union blockade of the Confederacy. All of the whites living in the area fled, abandoning an estimated 10,000 slaves.

Army Maj. Gen. Thomas W. Sherman was left to manage the slaves, at that time labeled “human contraband” due to their slave status. By April 1862, Army leaders had requested equipment for a Black regiment, initiating the “Port Royal Experiment” that would see former slaves take arms against Confederates.

On May 8, 1862, the first 150 “contraband” volunteers enlisted at Hilton Head, South Carolina. Two months later, in July, Congress passed the Militia Act of 1862, authorizing black armed service.

On Aug. 5, 1862, Brig. Gen. Rufus Saxton deployed to the Georgia-Florida region with Company A, 1st SCVAD, and the company conducted the first Black unit combat operations on St. Simons Island.

Later that month the First Kansas Volunteers began forming and later mustered in early 1863. That’s where Allen believes some historical quibbling might emerge from his findings, because the official mustering is what is often used for unit histories and placing such events in a historical context.

He has not found details showing a documented “muster” of the 1st SCVAD as a regiment. In part, Allen and Hodges believe that’s because a lot of the SCVAD’s work was experimental, and, even in the North, arming freed slaves was somewhat controversial, so it wasn’t widely publicized.

Detailed histories of the unit are more difficult to find because many of the former slaves were prohibited by law from learning to read and write, while free men in the North and Kansas often sent letters home recounting their lives in uniform.

Also, the 1st SCVAD was formed at the beginning of the war, deep in enemy territory. As they formed, they were fighting.

But Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a white officer in command of the regiment, wrote in his 1869 book, “Army Life in a Black Regiment,” that the 1st SCVAD can rightfully claim its place as the first Black regiment “that ever bore arms in defence of freedom on the continent of America.”

“…[M]y regiment was unquestionably the first mustered into service of the United States,” he wrote. He listed Nov. 7, 1862, as unit’s muster date, but it followed Company A’s combat experience in August of that year.

As the war progressed, bureaucracy also buried some of the story. More colored units were raised and deployed, and as part of a reorganization of the growing number of Black troops, the 1st SCVAD was reflagged as the 33rd U.S. Colored Troops, which it staked until shortly after the end of the war when it was disbanded along with many other units in 1866.

Further official oversight caused more damage when, in 1929, an Army board determined the 1st SCVAD Regimental Colors had no historic value and they were then destroyed. But, in 1988, artifacts from the 1st SCVAD’s Emancipation Day Ceremony were discovered in the West Point Museum, where they remain preserved.