EP:215 The Invisible Generals: Honoring American's First Black Generals

On Coming Home Well, we shine a light on the incredible journeys of America’s first Black generals, Benjamin O. Davis Sr. and Jr., a father and son who helped integrate the American military and created the Tuskegee Airmen. Their stories, brought to life by Doug Melville, are a testament to perseverance and courage in the face of systemic racism and overwhelming odds.

Through our conversation, the narrative of the Davis family unfolds like the pages of an epic, each chapter revealing another layer of sacrifice and determination. From Ben Davis Jr.'s silent trials at West Point to the astounding success of the Tuskegee Airmen under his command, these accounts are not merely historical footnotes but vibrant chapters of American history. Doug's intimate knowledge and personal connection to these "Invisible Generals" provides a unique perspective on the familial and national legacy they've left behind, inspiring us to remember the unsung heroes who have shaped our nation.

Join us for this unforgettable episode, filled with stories of bravery, innovation, and the indefatigable pursuit of the American Dream.

Doug Melville | The Official Website of Doug Melville

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Coming Home Well podcast, the show that educates, supports and advocates for the veteran community. Your host, Dr Tyler Pirron, US Army retired, will bring you exciting conversations with amazing guests about resources, research and military history, all geared to helping our warriors to come home well. Here's your host, Dr Tyler Pirron.

Speaker 2: 0:34

Welcome back to Coming Home. Well, I'm your host, tyler Pirron, and today we have a really, really neat story. You know that I love doing military history discussions and also about family, because so much of the military revolves around family, multiple generations serving. And so we have an awesome guest today, doug Melville. And you're like, who is Doug Melville? Well, I'm going to tell you, because he is a great story, is a great book. It's right behind me and we're going to talk about it. It's Invisible Generals, about the first black general officers in the United States, which is amazing. First off, like I've never heard the story. Now I've heard of the background of it. It's a skee-gee airman, right, we've talked about that, we've had guests on, we've read the books and everybody knows about that story. If you're sort of a military or Air Force buff and so you're like, oh yeah, I know sort of the story, I'm a person who knows about that, there's way more to the story and if you read the book, you're going to get a lot of it. But we're going to talk to Doug and find out more because it's a family story for him. So let me give you a little bit of a background. Red Tails, which was.

Speaker 2: 1:43

The George Lucas' celebration of America's first black flying squadron, who was a skee-gee airman, should have been a moment of victory for Doug. He expected to see his great-uncle, benjamin O Davis Jr, the squadron commander, immortalized on screen for his selfless contributions to America. But as the film went on, he was shocked. Shocked to realize that Ben Jr's name had been stricken. It was replaced by a fictional Colonel, aj Bullard. Why would they do that? I don't know. There's probably a million reasons, but we'll get into that. And Ben's father, benjamin O Davis Sr, america's first black general who helped integrate the military, was left out too. Now, when Doug realized this, he was dejected. He was kind of upset, which I would be too. Like your whole family, your lineage, your legacy, has sort of been wiped clean from the big screen adaptation of the skee-gee airman. He realized that in order to bring this to the public, he would have to do the work himself, this inspirational story about the challenges they overcame. And he's going to have to do some work. But he's going to do all the work and he wrote the book and now he's going to talk with us about it.

Speaker 2: 2:59

In Invisible Generals, the book, melville shares his quest to rediscover his family's story across five generations, from post-Civil War America to modern-day Asia and Europe. In life, the Davises were denied the recognition and compensation they'd earned. But through his journey, doug uncovered something greater that dedication and self-sacrifice can move proverbial mountains, even in a world determined to make you invisible Invisible. General recounts the lives of a father and his son who always maintained their belief in the American dream. As the inheritor of their legacy, doug retraces their steps, advocates for them to receive their long-overdue honors and unlocks the potential we all hold to recover powerful family stories lost to the past.

Speaker 2: 3:43

Now, this is from the introduction of the book, so go read the rest of the book, but I thought it was so powerful to set this up. Who is Doug and why is he writing about these folks? He's not a service member, he's not a historian. It's a family story and that's what I really love about this this love of family, but also the recognition of people that went through some really amazing challenges to help us get where we are today. Doug, thank you so much for joining us on Coming Home. Well, no, thank you so much.

Speaker 3: 4:13

That setup was like Academy Award winning, right there.

Speaker 2: 4:18

I have a face for radio, a face for T, a face for radio that. So I try to read it. So we've talked a little bit. I did the intro. Why don't you tell us your words how this book came about, what it's about, sort of the two, three minute elevator speech that you must have given to those book publishers saying, hey, I want to write a book.

Speaker 3: 4:43

Yes. So thank you so much for having me on your show and for all your listeners out there. So I was a graduated college in marketing and I was a 10 year marketing executive. I really hadn't dove into my family's story when I was coming up and I would meet Ben Davis Jr, who was really the center of the book and the commander of the Tuskegee Airmen. You know, he bought me my first car, a Honda Accord, my first set of golf clubs, my first Apple computer. The man was so calm. There was no military in his home. It was Feng Shui In Arlington, virginia. He would ask me to come out on the balcony and he would watch airplanes land and take off.

Speaker 3: 5:27

I never knew really much about him. You know and my, we would always wear a little bit of red and always salute him and people around would salute, but I never really knew it. You know, if your family doesn't explain it and I'd say, oh, what did Ben do, dad? And dad was like oh, he was a lot, he loved aviation and he was in that military, he was a pilot in the Air Force, but no context, no, anything. So I'm living my life for 10 years and I get invited to the premiere of the Red Tail screening because he's the commander of the Red Tails and they invited me to the screening on behalf of the family. And when the movie was finished and I realized his name had been changed, I look around the room and everybody just goes Doug, it's Hollywood, it's not. This is not a documentary.

Speaker 2: 6:22

And no one lies.

Speaker 3: 6:24

Matter of fact, just like I say, oh, hey, you know, this is the menu, or hey, this is how much it costs, is just you know? And no one saw anything. You know, it was no one cared, really, you know. So I went home and I talked to my dad and I said, dad, you know, can you believe they changed Ben's name. And my dad just said, you know, doug, you know they made the Tuskegee Airmen movie on HBO. How many movies do you want him to make? You know, because my dad's like old school, he's like okay, he's not in the movies, like it is what it is, is what it is. And I kept pressing them on it and he goes Doug. Well, of course they changed the names were black and it took me back because I wasn't raised like that race, was never anything, that was less than more than you are aware of it. But it wasn't positioned in a way where, where it was, you know, that connotation was on it.

Speaker 2: 7:26

And I'd be pissed. I mean personally, I'd be like mad yeah he goes.

Speaker 3: 7:33

Doug, you know a lot of our family history has been erased and we had to live our lives like we were invisible. You know, let me tell you the story of Ben and his dad, who raised me, and we used to have to not be able to drive at night because someone will pull us over, live in the farthest area, eat last, live in the worst barrack. You know, my dad started just saying because this was just the way it was, and Ben and his dad were known as the invisible generals because everyone told them once you leave this base, once your time is done today, you need to be invisible. So he's raised.

Speaker 2: 8:17

The book comes from.

Speaker 3: 8:18

Yeah, yeah, and he's raised in this. You know he's actually there and I freeze and I'm like what? And then I said I'm going to start researching it. You know, like he knew a lot of it. But you know, here, say, or word of mouth, so I started going, you know, set a Google alert. I didn't go off for three years and for the next three years I start going to the Google, I go on eBay, I start looking around the internet for stories, I start looking at presidential libraries, I start looking at, you know, different areas and then, three years later, the Google alert goes off that I had set for Benjamin Davis and it was from West Point and it said we are considering naming a barrack after one of three people Norman Schwartzkopf, william Westmoreland or Benjamin Davis.

Speaker 2: 9:18

I know to the three, but now I know all three, so I am moving ahead.

Speaker 3: 9:24

But you know this is how it came about. It really wasn't. You know it was small aha moments, almost clues into the story, but it wasn't something. You know, I have my day job. You know, I was just kind of going to do the research.

Speaker 2: 9:38

It's sort of like a family project, family research.

Speaker 3: 9:44

And then genealogy, and I had actually switched careers from marketing to become a chief diversity officer and advertising. So I started to learn about cultures and storytelling in different areas. So nevertheless, I get this. The alert goes off and my family had never gone back to West Point. We didn't say West Point, it wasn't something we ever were negative about, it was just kind of like one of those things where Ben went to West Point and we don't talk about it. You know, so my dad was like we just Growing up as a kid or anything of any of my brothers and sisters, they were like just we never say West Point, mm-hmm.

Speaker 3: 10:24

And I Go back to West Point when the Google or I write an email and I say you know, I see that you're, you know, gonna name the building after one of these three people. And I would like to tell you the story of Benjamin. Oh, davis, I want to go tell you his story, mm-hmm. And they have me meet in the office of diversity, which I couldn't believe because I at this point I was very clear that no one talked to him in all the things. And I sit down and I say we, there's several people in uniform out of uniform, couple, civilian and I tell the story of Ben Davis and his dad and at the end of the story there really wasn't a dry eye in the room and they said you know, we're gonna do everything we can to fight for his name to be the name that we dedicate the largest Barracks in the center of campus.

Speaker 3: 11:15

After a hundred million dollar building. They were like this will probably be the last Barracks ever built on the campus, you know. So they were like this is like a huge deal. Who we named this after? And that was kind of how it really happened.

Speaker 2: 11:31

And then, once that happened, and one thing led to another, so one of the things that I really liked about the book is you know, three generations, five centuries, five decades I forget the name, but it's like going back to pre-civil war all the way to current. Yeah, you have interspaced the things with your family, with world events. Yeah, you know, this president was elected and put into office and this happened and this happened. And that is such a great way to like Make it all make sense because, like, if I see a list of things, of dates, I don't know what the hex you know. Like, you know I may have a pretty good grasp of history, but you know, like what year was McKinley the president?

Speaker 3: 12:18

Yeah, no, I learned my presidents. I learned my presidents through the story. Right, you don't?

Speaker 2: 12:23

know them all, you know, you memorize them like first grade, and then you know, like you forget, but even then you're not like what year was that? Mm-hmm, right, like, even if you can recall the rhyme, you don't remember, like what's happening. So I think that's really kind of neat, because it goes back all the way to civil war, pre-civil war, all the way forward, and so it's like oh, here's where everything was, here's, you know, when he got promoted. This is when what happened, and it was temporarily promoted and permanently promoted, because nowadays we only have permanent promotions. Very rarely do we have fracking. I mean, it happens, but usually it's like Six months or some small period of time and it used to be super common.

Speaker 2: 13:07

You know, people would serve for years in a temporary position, temporary grade higher than what they actually were, and so that that was kind of neat for me as a military guy to go look back and go, oh, this is. Oh yeah, I forgot about that. That's the way it used to be done. Uh, you know they, because not everything's electronic and digital and instant now, and so it was. You know paper records and you know congress and things took a long time. Uh, so they would adjust. So let's sort of talk about the book, sort of the beginning and the the flow of the book. So, ben Davis, tuskegee airman but he didn't start out as the commander of the Tuskegee airman, he started out at West Point, yeah, uh, junior and senior. Uh, you know that. That it was throwing me for a loop a little bit when I was first reading it.

Speaker 3: 13:57

Yeah, no junior, senior.

Speaker 2: 13:59

Which one okay? Uh, then I was able to get it straight.

Speaker 3: 14:03

Yeah, that was important to really, you know, to your point, lay it out. You know, when you try to get 150 years in a one book, you know editing is so important, but I think just to kind of take it from the beginning and kind of walk through the timeline to get where we are today is, uh, the main characters in the book who are the invisible generals, a father and a son with the same name, ben senior and ben junior, ben seniors. Dad, though, is really where we begin the story, and his name is lewis davis, and he was actually, uh, a house servant for A general, logan, who people know from logan airport in boston, just from the name of logan circle and square. So logan was best friends with ulysses s grant. So when logan had a servant child in his home, it was lewis davis, and then he ended up raising him as his son because he was so loved. So when lewis davis Uh becomes a little bit older, he becomes the babysitter for ulysses s grant son, and this is really why it's so critical to the story, because he was with the president, president in the 1860s in the white house, allowed to go in and out, and we still have people enslaved in this. This boy is allowed in and out of the white house, allowed to know the presidents, live with a senator. So this was an unbelievable moment.

Speaker 3: 15:38

So when uh lewis got a job and he grew up, he had a son, ben davis senior, and he wanted to get his son into the west point military academy because he didn't want to work with his dad, he wanted to work with uh the military. So he gets the signatures from logan and president william mckinley rejects it Because he didn't want to get into the habit of allowing blacks in the west point. So ben seniors furious because he's like we. You know, we got the signatures from the you know, everything's all set. So he runs away to wyoming because he had heard about a group called the buffalo soldiers and he realizes being in a question is the best way to move up the ranks. So he masters horse riding and a question and two years later mckinley promotes him to officer and writes him a note and says I saved you two years Out of the four. He would have been at west point. Yeah, and then he dies in office Just a few weeks later. Oh, wow, what I mean it's. I mean you can't even make That'd be.

Speaker 2: 16:53

You couldn't if I made that up. It'd be too unbelievable.

Speaker 3: 16:57

It's so. That's how ben senior became an officer. He then meets charles young up in the buffalo soldiers, and charles young said they're because he was a black graduate of west point. There is a way to get into west point as a black man, but the best way would be to raise your child from a boy and get him ready for all of the things you're gonna have to deal with. So ben senior gets married, has two kids and in the birth of his third child his wife dies in childbirth. So now he's a single dad, the only black officer in the military, a single dad with three children, and his son was ben davis jr. And to relieve his stress, he brings ben to a barnstorming Aviation show and pays one week salary For ben to take a 30 minute plane ride. Wow, and this is at the very beginning of aviation open cockpit by plane and they're.

Speaker 2: 18:06

They're flying around just doing shows showing what's available. Like you know, Like it's a big wonder to everyone that planes even exist totally, totally.

Speaker 3: 18:15

You gotta think this is. You know, you're just landing in a field on a dirt road. It's almost like a novelty, you know, like well it's a novelty.

Speaker 3: 18:23

I'm sure you know. So ben jr Comes down and he goes daddy, I want to be a pilot. And his dad goes there's only one way that we can make you a pilot and that's to become a graduate in the top third of west point. And at that moment he trains his son. Same routine, what to eat, when to get up, everything you know. And I tell people it's like venus and serena for the military, or tiger woods. You know where their parents were like.

Speaker 2: 18:54

You know we're at nine, ten o'clock, nine, ten, whatever the age was onward, he's doing that, that very regimented life.

Speaker 3: 19:03

Yeah, so he's aware of it. He ends up passing the tech. But the family has to get the signature and there's only one black Congressperson, oscar de priest, in chicago. They have to sell their family house in dc that was luis davis's home Relocate with the money to illinois and have to live in the district where the congressman sits with the signature and junior takes the test, fails oh wow.

Speaker 3: 19:34

And you can actually go to the smithsonian and read the letters, the actual letters from oscar de priest to ben's dad, to ben jr, when he failed. Oh wow. And ben jr said you know, this is so bad, I'm so sorry. And his dad goes that's okay, we try next year. Just go take a year at college and try again. And he goes to college and he passes the next time. And then he goes, uh, to begin his journey at west point. But the thing that's so crazy about this is a single dad yeah, that's all this for his son sells the family house to relocate, to get a signature so your son can get to college. I tell people if we stopped the story right here, no one's doing it.

Speaker 2: 20:25

No one's doing that's dedication right there. That's a single-minded focus.

Speaker 3: 20:31

So it's like so incredible. So then Ben Jr gets on a train, gets to West Point and when he arrives they don't realize he's black. They pull in the commandant's office and they give him a special room which is at the end of the hall, modified janitor's closet. You could never get an exact what it was, but it wasn't great. He had no rooming and that night he goes to bed. Next morning he wakes up and he hears the pitter patter of all the other cadets going to the sinks for a mandatory meeting. And then he realizes that they probably didn't notify him because no one knew he was in the room. Ah yeah. So he gets dressed and runs down and then the sink's door was locked and when he listens in they say we accidentally let an N word in here. We are to treat him as if he's invisible until he drops out. So Ben runs home, calls his dad at the phone. He had to go like to the end of the hallway with the patchwork person.

Speaker 2: 21:36

Yeah party line operator, please connect me too.

Speaker 3: 21:41

So he gets the connection and his dad goes. We worked our whole lives for this. There's 12 million Americans on the outside rooting for you. Write the date of graduation on your wall and no matter what, you're gonna finish at that day. And he made a commitment to his dad and the 12 million black Americans. And Ben Davis Jr went to the United States Military Academy for four years, 50 weeks a year at that time and not one human interaction outside the line of duty. Couldn't go into the library. No study buddies fail. Classes such as boxing, cpr because there was no partners willing to work with him, left him in the woods when they finished doing different drills. But he would say, the most embarrassing thing was you had to ask for permission to sit to eat and not one cadet would allow him to sit. So he had to spend every single breakfast, lunch and dinner going table to table with a tray of food and never being able to sit to eat. For four years, three times a day Wow.

Speaker 2: 23:10

So they totally ignored him, pretend like he didn't exist, invisible, like he's not even a person. It's just that nothing is there. Now I've much thought about this. I have colleagues that work on this sort of research like, hey, how did this happen? How did integration happen? How did these type of things come to be? What was it like? And we talked a little bit about this. The fact that he was invisible was one thing, but it was he actively braided, or you know.

Speaker 3: 23:48

No, that was the whole thing is that he would say in his book that if he wasn't harassed because of the tight scheduling of a West Point cadet so being treated as if it was invisible was actually helpful. He could study, he could concentrate. He had to have all his answers word for word, you know. So he used every second of knowing he exists to learn the information. And then he ends up graduating in the top third of the class.

Speaker 3: 24:24

And when he asked to fly planes, they say we do not know Blacks to operate heavy machinery, and that was due to the Army War College report that had been written a decade before. So they encourage him to drop out and offer to pay for him to go back to Chicago to be a lawyer and start a law practice that they would fund. And he said I want to be a pilot. So I just imagine you know it's easy for me to tell it, but you know you're not going to be a pilot. You know it's easy for me to tell it, but you have gone through this for four years. You get to the top third where you could pick your assignment, and then they tell you how about we pay for you to go home honorably discharged for you and send you to law school Basically they're offering to bribe him to go away.

Speaker 2: 25:16

Yeah, like, hey, we'll send you to law school. Bye, but he didn't choose that route, did he.

Speaker 3: 25:22

He doesn't choose the route. He graduates with his in. At the graduation, him and his dad, out of the 335,000 people in the military and in the graduation photo are the only two black officers, line officers in the entire military until the start of World War II. That's so shocking. So now you have two officers. But it is against protocol for whites to salute blacks and blacks cannot be in charge of whites. So the military puts one white soldier in every group of black troops, so neither of them can manage troops. Wow. So what are they to do with these men? They send them to teach ROTC military science, military strategy at black segregated colleges for four years and him. And then they drop in the Jeep and they go college to college to teach men, you know, military science and military college, which at the time, from my understanding, was a much lower position than a normal person would would be put in it after becoming a West Point grab. But they did it happily, they bonded, they talk strategy and they, you know, really pulled it all together. And the reason that I was so discouraged about the red tails, because this four year time period that they drove to black colleges and taught military science.

Speaker 3: 26:56

Well, in 1940, when FDR wanted to get reelected, he wanted to win the black vote. Blacks were voting in a large proportion for Republicans because Abraham Lincoln had created the Republican party and emancipated the slaves. So he really got a lot of the black vote for the party. So he was a Democrat trying to get the black vote. And he brings in and a senior advisor to Negro policy, which was the highest ranked black in America, was Ben Davis senior, and says how can I win the black vote? And he goes you have to allow blacks equal opportunity in the military, equal pay in the military and the ability to operate heavy machinery, which begins with allowing blacks to fly airplanes. And he says but who would lead that? And he said my son and Ben junior goes down to Tuskegee.

Speaker 3: 27:57

And that was the creation of the Tuskegee experiment, which became the Tuskegee airman, which was put into effect because of Ben Davis senior and FDR and which was led by Benjamin O Davis junior, his son. So Ben junior takes the pilot exam and passes with four other men and they become the first five pilots. Ben is the highest ranked because he graduated West Point and there's four other men. So when the five men pass, fdr is encouraged by Ben senior to go through with the experiment and actually make a group of black pilots. And FDR says okay, but doesn't think, because the black graduation rate was under 2%. All right, the black literacy rate was under 10%, so he doesn't think there's going to be enough people that will able to hear the message or sign up. But because Ben junior and senior had gone to those black colleges for four years, they put out the announcement 15,000. Wow, go down to Tuskegee and those become the Tuskegee airman.

Speaker 3: 29:10

Now I'm saying this is the story. This, to me, is the whole story.

Speaker 2: 29:15

So it's a blessing in disguise having to do the military ROTC at the historically black colleges, because they knew everybody. They knew all the professors and the students and all the people that might be even close to being interested. Thank you, 15,000 people show up. I'm sure that not all passed, because that's a pretty tough exam to become a pilot, but they have more than enough to man and outfit the organization from the very beginning. This experiment of hey, can these folks fly planes? We have a critical need for pilots.

Speaker 3: 29:50

Yeah, and so how it worked was 1,000 of the men became pilots, a little over 1,000. And those are really what we know is the Tuskegee Airmen, but the Tuskegee Airmen name actually includes all 15,000. And this is the craziest part of this story, which when you hear people say America wasn't built on race or race doesn't matter, but this is the most important part of the story. In the war, the military was still 100% segregated, so if the wrench was used on a white airplane, it couldn't be used on a black airplane.

Speaker 3: 30:30

If a part was used. I mean, if a mechanic fixed a white airplane, they couldn't fix the black airplane. So Ben Jr, with really no training because he had gone to West Point but because he hadn't trained anyone for the four year period ultimately commanded all the cooks, all the mechanics, all the backup. I mean every single person, 15,000 people. The guy's 29 years old, wow.

Speaker 2: 31:01

That is a huge responsibility for any 29 year old, and so he sort of thrust in this position sort of the juxtaposition of time and place and, of course, for the folks that aren't aware, that Tuskegee Airmen experiment was a roaring success. What happens? So he's there, he's leading the Tuskegee Airmen. What happens next? I'm so involved in this story now.

Speaker 3: 31:28

Okay. So he trains the men and there's a debate whether you send them to war. They end up going over to North Africa and then Ramitelle, Italy, and because of the worst planes and the parts and everything we spoke about, it wasn't practical for them to really do much because they didn't have the equipment. So because it waited so long and there was a shortage of pilots and they needed the equipment, they rolled out the P-51 Mustang which was the fastest propeller plane ever built. The next plane after that was a jet engine. So the Tuskegee Airmen were flying the Primo number one draft pick airplane ever built with propellers. At the time it was the number one plane. So they get all new planes so they could finally fly with real equipment and show what they're working with.

Speaker 3: 32:24

And then Ben realizes that the maps are segregated. So Ben's getting maps and realizing their base in Ramitelle is not on the maps. So he tells the men to paint the tails red, which was the one color that they had. So Americans in our side of the Allied forces would not accidentally shoot, bomb or attempt to hurt those, thinking they were enemy planes. And that is the birth of the red tails. I'm fascinating. So the red tails get an assignment to a score enemy bombers. They did the assignment so well. At the end of the military the medals were distributed and they go to an event and people start cheering them as the red tails and that was the first time Ben had heard really the celebration of this moniker.

Speaker 3: 33:22

The men get back to America and many of them are released from the military because the contracts they signed were for the experiment and when the war ended the demand for their services ended. And here you have 900 pilots going into the private sector. But private sector aviation was segregated until 1964. So they get back in the late 40s and none of them could get jobs and aviation. Oh, that's crazy. So that's why many of the Tuskegee Army washed out. Now, at the same time, Ben Jr becomes a one star general, two star general, three star general. He's commander of the 13th Air Forces and right before he's supposed to get his four star, LBJ lets him know that he's done enough for civil rights. He passed the civil rights agenda that Martin Luther King wanted. He elevated Thurgood Marshall to the United States Supreme Court as the first black justice. So therefore he doesn't politically need to do anything else and tells Ben Davis Jr that he will not be receiving his fourth star.

Speaker 2: 34:39

Wow, you know politics. I'm telling you pox on both houses, but yes, I understand how that works. But golly, you know, this guy is doing all these things and his service continued. That's the important thing I think to take away is not like hey, he didn't like it, don't leave service. At the end of World War II, he continued on.

Speaker 3: 35:02

He continued on all the way through till 1970 when he left active duty. So he tries to get a job in aviation, fedex pilot, which had just started, mailman pilot, you know, american Airlines, united Pan Am, no one would hire him, you couldn't imagine a three star not getting a job nowadays.

Speaker 2: 35:24

Yeah, exactly, a super job. Not just any job, but any, you know like a super job. He could even get like the mail delivery guy with the planes where they used it all the time like a basic. You're not even dealing with the public.

Speaker 3: 35:40

So the Pentagon and the military was like he can't have no job, like like basically, they were like this is he, we have to give him a role.

Speaker 2: 35:54

Yeah, he has to be too valuable.

Speaker 3: 35:56

Yeah, like, how could this man not, you know, be able to get somewhere to work? So they create a position for him in the Pentagon. It was a special assignment to the Secretary of Transportation Aviation and they basically put him in a room and said, hey, you know, you know they didn't really have much for him to do. But he went back with a proposal and said, hey, I spent my career making aviation safe for the military, so why don't we do the same for aviation in the commercial side? And that's when he led. There was a lot of hijackings and skyjackings, where people would come on a plane, run up down the aisle with a gun, grab the jewels and the carry ons and then run to the end of the plane and parachute out and have a escape car at the bottom, pick them up, and they would. And this was happening 60 or 70 times, sometimes a month. Wow, so I don't think our memories.

Speaker 2: 37:01

I mean, we remember the hijackings, the terrorists and the things in the 70s and 80s, but I don't remember, like you know, like a bus robbery, that's what it sounds like.

Speaker 3: 37:11

Yeah, a bus robbery, right. So he said what we should do is three things we should start an airport security, because commercial security was only in two airports in DC actually that was the only one. So he said let's use every commercial airport bags and person walking through. We should start a United States air marshal program on a federal level with undercover officers. And we should create a door that locks on airlines that once the plane takes off it can't be opened. So he led the creation of all three of those different areas to keep aviation safe and was got so many people got good feedback because they were so nervous that once you put in all that security, people were going to be like I don't want to fly, you know you're doing nothing.

Speaker 3: 38:08

Now you're taking your hat you know everything off. So that was, that was.

Speaker 2: 38:14

Now we have to like basically strip to get on the airplanes and go through the liquid more than five ounces of something, yeah, but you know.

Speaker 2: 38:25

but back then, I mean, crap was happening on the daily and if folks don't remember, back in the seventies and eighties, the all sorts of terrorism and they were blowing up planes, they were taking them hostage and flying them other places. Quite often and it wasn't just like once in a while or one guy that's you know mental case. It was really sending a message. So this was the very beginning of that. Obviously the more robbery as opposed to terrorism. But you know we have evolved since then. But he was involved in all that. What an amazing piece of history of like, hey, how do we solve this? With a job? They made up essentially just to give them, you know, something to do. And he said, hey, I'm going to, I'm going to make the most of this, I'm not just going to sit here and call it.

Speaker 3: 39:12

And that was to me. I mean, it's like every part of the story is unbelievable that he's treated this way. Never mad, never you know, always just saying it could always be worse. We're so fortunate to live here, the only country where this could happen. This was my American dream Like never how you would think someone would behave, and he was so successful with that. Richard Nixon under the Nixon administration, carter asked him if he could do the same thing for the roads and he led the creation of the federally mandated 55 mile an hour speed limit. His nickname was Mr 55 in the Pentagon and that was his last assignment 55, stay alive.

Speaker 2: 39:58

back in the 70s, that was the idea.

Speaker 3: 40:00

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 40:02

You're using more gas with the embargoes, and I don't think people realize it. If you think back, if you've been told these stories or if you think about it, you could only get gas on certain days depending on the last digit of your license plate, because they didn't have enough gas for everybody, and so you couldn't just go like, oh, I'm on a quarter tank and I need to go fill up. If it wasn't your day, you're just out of luck. So you better drive slow and careful and really decide where you're going to be driving.

Speaker 3: 40:33

It was five minutes ago.

Speaker 2: 40:35

I mean.

Speaker 3: 40:35

I remember growing up my parents would be like, oh my gosh, the gas, you know. Now it's just like 100 miles, one mile.

Speaker 2: 40:43

Right and you could just go fill up wherever, whenever. Back then it was only certain times of the day you had to be there when it was open. It wasn't like 24 hours a day. Now you just ping in. That's just an amazing piece of history, because the 55 is really the basis for so much of our speed limits across the country. It's changed a little bit in the last 10 years or so, but for a long time it was a nationwide thing. It was really linked to highway funding. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 41:15

And these were the stories where I, just when I'm researching this, I'm sitting here going. Even when we went back to Simon and Schuster and all the fact checkers and everything and source, they were like it's all real, Because it's almost. You just can't believe.

Speaker 2: 41:34

It sounds kind of nonsensical, kind of made up, exaggerated, but then they went and said, yeah, this is actually the way it was.

Speaker 3: 41:42

Yeah, so this is so now. I'm born in the 70s, so I get to know Ben Jr and we go down everything to him. At every Christmas he's at the family. I mean, I see him all the time and I come to realize he raised my dad as his son because his wife was unable to have children and he always wanted that bond with a son, like his dad had with him. So at seven years old my dad goes down to Tuskegee and is raised primarily by his wife, agatha, because Ben was off at war. But just like any child, you would spend more time with your mother at that time because your father would be on assignment. And my dad was like, yeah, george Washington Carver, I'd run and get fruit. And I was like what? It's just like? This story is crazy. So my dad wanted to be a pilot. He had a horrible vision and Ben said you know, I think the next frontier.

Speaker 3: 42:38

My dad was in the army, I was in the Air Force, but I think the law, because all these laws are tricky and they were gerrymandering and all these things were starting to get much more light. And he goes. I think you should go to law school at Howard, which was the centerpiece of civil rights law at the time and my dad ended up. Thurgood Marshall used to go to Howard and role play with the students because the Supreme Court was segregated. So when the attorneys before he was a justice would go rehearse in the Supreme Court to get the footing and the setting and you know, understand everything when they were going to present their cases, he had to go to Howard because he used the students that were the best in the class to reenact the scenes, and my dad was one of those students. So my dad learned under him and then he ended up becoming a judge in the state of Connecticut.

Speaker 3: 43:34

And you know, in 1998, after all, over a decade, I believe it was 12 years Senator John McCain was trying to lobby for Ben Davis Jr to receive the fourth star that he hadn't had, and the military and the presidents were like, you know, we don't want to get in the habit of you know, all these old promotions, everything's done, he's been retired. You know it's that kind of thing. But in 1998, bill Clinton agrees and they elevate Ben to a four star full general on December 9, 1998. But the night before the ceremony we had to sign a piece of paper and it was the paper that stated we would not receive any financial retribution from 1967 to 1998, which was 31 years. Nor would we receive any money from 1998 until Ben passed for the promotion. So he would end up dying four years later and that was 35 years of no pay. So they were agreed to acknowledge the fourth star but not compensate the family and his wife.

Speaker 2: 44:53

So it was entirely honorary, but it didn't actually change anything.

Speaker 3: 44:57

So his wife of 62 years didn't even go. She was furious. And we all get to the White House and Ben goes. You know, I remember when my dad brought me on my first plane ride and I told him I wanted to be the best pilot and I'm going to go get my fourth star today, because what difference does it make? Yeah, he gets up there and he collects that fourth star and he ends up passing away in 2002, four years later, on the fourth of July, and request a black tombstone in Arlington to overlook all the whites in death that overlooked him in life.

Speaker 3: 45:36

Now, when I tell you that's some symbolic crepe, the man never talked like that and then he surprised everybody because when we went back to see it we didn't know that there was a letter that he had written for a black tombstone in Arlington. So you have a whole row of white and there's three black tombstones there. Third, good marshal had the first one. Coincidentally, another gentleman had a second one and Ben had a third one. Then they changed the rule. You can't do it anymore. So that's where Ben was laid to rest.

Speaker 3: 46:12

And to just connect it back to the West Point story, if Ben was not awarded the fourth star. He could not have had the barracks named after him, because you had to be four-star to be considered of the highest naming rank in the West Point campus ecosystem. So it was that fourth star that allowed me, well after his passing, to be able to take this story and communicate with West Point about it and have them be able to execute something that they felt was deserving of the honor, because if he would have had three stars, he wouldn't have been eligible.

Speaker 2: 46:50

The honor is one thing, but the money would have been really nice too. But I understand his point, but also it kind of stings a little Like yeah, we'll give it to you, but we're not going to give it all to you.

Speaker 2: 47:04

But that's the typical of our government. I have to say that's like, yeah, we'll sort of do it, but yes, the fact that he was honored so as he clearly deserved, with the fourth star, the highest rank, working at that level, that background and that history is just amazing. So let me ask you this You're researching your family. What stands out the most in this entire story of Ben Sr, Ben Jr, your family background, your entire experience with this what stands out the most?

Speaker 3: 47:43

I think the two things that stood out the most were number one understanding what your family did to sacrifice for you to get where you are. Maybe you've never talked to your grandmother or grandfather, but they moved here for you to go to school here. There are so many moves. We don't talk about it. You talk about your kids, you talk about your partner, wife, what have you? But how many times do we be like what did grandma do for us to have this home? You just don't hear people say it.

Speaker 3: 48:15

So the first thing was understanding that we are all receipts of our grandparents and parents' effort and we sometimes don't even acknowledge it. So that was like the first thing. It was just really some self-realization and appreciation was number one. And number two was everyone's American dream is different. They didn't look at this and this is a huge piece. They didn't look at it like they had it bad. They were like we have it great, but they were treated. If you look at it from the eyes of history and from the eyes of others, they were treated horribly. But their answer was we have different rules and we have to make the best of those rules because if we do great through performance, our kids can have their rules.

Speaker 2: 49:23

Exactly. I mean when they moved to Chicago just to get the nomination. That really shows the sacrifices that's a huge thing to be able to even ask of someone but to do it. After all that effort and training it fails the test but then it gets in, it gets the letter. All those things that happen that we don't think about. That helped set us up for success today. Really, how people were treated at the time. They're thinking man, I got a pretty good compared to what it was Now we're always moving forward and people today would look back in horror and shock and repulsion of how they were treated At the time.

Speaker 2: 50:12

The individuals like Ben Sr going hey, I was able to go to West Point, I was able to do this. Promoted, I have a pretty good, but you're also looking at like you're treated like absolute dog poo and shunned essentially for four years. That's almost psychological torture in some ways. But it gave him the strength to overcome and achieve his dream, which I think is one of the greatest parts of this entire story is the realization of the American dream and sort of the ever moving forward, not just complaining about the way it was but hey, I can do better, I can do this, I can achieve more, and then my children and their children and their children will achieve more and more and more. I really love that part of the story because I would love to have met him Ben Sr and Ben Jr to be able to go and have that story.

Speaker 2: 51:12

I'm sure that I know there's books and there's other things, but it's one thing, as a self-effacing and sort of modest person, that he ended up being after retirement, just the like. Oh yeah, I was in the military. I was a pilot, like no, you were like a diskegee airman, like the guy that's you were like he pilot, you were the pilot and he would just be like I'm a pilot, and then he couldn't even fly a commercial plane.

Speaker 3: 51:37

But just, there's one other part of the story that I share. I bring it up in the book but only slightly, but I think it's worth talking about. There's so much talk these days about race and this and that you know all the conversations that are in the modern, you know canon. But when there was a time when Jesse Jackson was looking to make the term African American the media used term for blacks from Negro, the term Negro was printed in the newspapers and so on and so forth.

Speaker 3: 52:18

And Jesse Jackson said we've evolved, we're not Negroes, we would like to use the term African American. So he decides that he wants to throw a press conference, invite all the media that could show up and all these big voices, and he wants to propose that the American term used will go from Negro to African American. And he calls Ben and says hey, will you come up to this news conference and will you, you know, support this idea to stop using the word Negro for African American? And Ben goes I fought my whole life to be American. What we should be doing is go from Negro to American and this was Ben's whole thing. I fought for us to be American Period, just like everyone else, and when he launched his book in the late 80s and in the early 90s, when he would go talk to students and things like that, he would share that. When there was an African American Student Union, he wouldn't go.

Speaker 2: 53:29

Wow, he was dedicated to that concept.

Speaker 3: 53:33

And people would yell at him and in the last few paragraphs of his book he shares, and I quote it in Invisible Generals, the challenging part of the speaking engagements that he became used to was the Q&A, when they would say why don't you use the term African American? Why won't you speak at the African American Student Union? And he goes I don't believe in segregation. I fought my whole life to be an American and it would cause arguments that would get loud and crazy and he would tell me that this was the most bizarre thing that he could ever believe, that he fought his whole life to be an American and now groups are now saying we want to be separate.

Speaker 2: 54:26

Yes, and you know, it's just amazing to me that, after all the things he endured and the great achievements that that would be like, you know, like you're going to argue with a man about his views he's done that walk and that talk and led and demonstrated to millions and millions of people that we went from like a totally segregated military to combat success, with Tuskegee airmen flying and fighting and doing all the things. Hey, this works. And now the military is totally integrated and we don't even think about it. Obviously, things happen, but you know, like, yeah, like we don't segregation and that's crazy talk, but then he's still fighting it, even after he leaves service, many decades later.

Speaker 3: 55:21

And he still wanted to like go in the ring and, like you know, kind of rap battle it. When people ask me now, because I'm a diversity officer and they'll be like Doug, you know how do I identify? And I go I would like to identify as American, you know, because I'm on his school of thought like 10 years researching it and learning it, so much I am on that page. So, personally, I would like to be an American. And then people say, oh, just an American, but aren't you like a black American? I go, well, if I have to be black American, but I would rather just be American. But I'm with Ben on the African American. If you ask an other person of any other ethnicity, they'll say American. They don't say German American, italian American. I mean, they may be, but they don't say that as the first answer. And I do like the American and I stand for what he stood for. And you know I would like Ben to get the Presidential Medal of Freedom. I would like him to be honored by President Biden.

Speaker 3: 56:30

You know I'm really here to say there's more to do. You know they just opened a Ben Davis senior veteran village for veterans who are homeless, who are having trouble finding somewhere to live. It's 55 living units in the Midwest. They just dedicated his bear bear, where he lived in Wyoming, to another housing unit. So what I'm saying is we have to take these stories and we have to take all the listeners that have families and you know I tell my family and other people that asked me oh, you didn't serve, or you know you didn't go into the military, and I said my service is, in short, my service is telling the value and importance of their service to inspire others, because I feel like that's just the way, you know, this unfolded. You know it's just something I want to do to give back to the country and donate my time to talk about the importance of diversity, and you know I never the real value that people bring is not on their color, not on their religion, not on any of these things.

Speaker 2: 57:46

It's what they do and the values they hold and the things that they demonstrate, which I think you've done in abundance by helping people, especially now real. See these stories. It's a family story of sacrifice and love and dedication, which I I it's an amazing story Like I couldn't imagine the things they had to go through, just because of the times and the way the country was, but they persevered and demonstrated that yeah, not only can we do these things, we can do these things Awesome.

Speaker 3: 58:18

You know, in the last chapter of the book I shared the story about when I went to the Smithsonian and I wanted to see all Ben Jr's archives and the woman who came out was was sharing with me that it's the most meticulous archives in all of the World War II because they kept everything in the original envelope. I mean their archives were because they knew every any minute someone could say you didn't have the paperwork, it was folded in half.

Speaker 3: 58:49

You know they were literally, you know, exactly, to the lay of the land, you know. And I asked the woman. I said why is it never been displayed? And she said we have a letter from Agatha that she wrote that was Benjamin Davis Jr's wife. When they had to go pick up the items and when they were taking the items out of the home to put in the truck to bring to the Smithsonian, she stood at the door with a knife and a key and all the honors that said African American. She crossed out the word African and sent a note to the curator of the Smithsonian and the woman pulled out the actual piece of paper and the paper said in the eyes of history, we would like to be known as Americans In this museum if anything is ever displayed. Wow, and I said you know what?

Speaker 2: 59:59

What more can you say about that? So we, I've talked to you about a lot of things, about the book, about Ben Sr and Jr and your father and all this history, but I'm sure there's something that I must have forgotten, that I must have overlooked to ask you what should I have asked you?

Speaker 3: 1:00:17

Well, that I haven't yet I think I mean you really were a great interviewer. I got to tell you I've done other ones. I'm saying you are really great at the job and you're really. I appreciate that. You know the host of the program is always a man up to my ears. I'm telling you this.

Speaker 2: 1:00:37

I'll ask you one last question, because it's one of those things what about this research in this book and learning about your family history changed you the most?

Speaker 3: 1:00:49

It gave me an appreciation of. My dad is 90. And he's definitely in the autumn of his years and it brought me closer to him and really, in the time of your life or maybe your family doesn't spend time with you or you go to the home I mean he's still living at home and everything. But I'm saying, you know, as you get older and you move away, I actually got closer to him and when the book came out on, you know, at the end of last year, veterans Day, it watching everything with my dad and spending time and him going through the process and him rereading it and him reliving the stories, it was a special thing that really is. My father's son connection with him was through reliving his father's son connection with Ben reliving I mean, it was really that kind of thing.

Speaker 2: 1:01:46

And special thing that the big ones he's gone. You'll never have.

Speaker 3: 1:01:50

Yeah, that was the biggest to me Positive about. It was just even this weekend. You know there was an article about it in our local hometown news. I call our local hometown newspaper, connecticut. I said, please, local hometown newspaper Connecticut, which is his favorite paper. You know he still reads the. You know the paper and everything. I said, please, hometown paper in Connecticut, can you please write a story on this so my dad could turn the page? And in my own self center way, please, Can I tell you. They printed a whole page on the story and my dad cried and said I cannot believe you are in the. You are in the Connecticut Post. Oh, wow, see, I love stories like this.

Speaker 2: 1:02:36

You know that was like now. You made it to the, to the small town newspaper story. That's his local paper. That's when you made it. Not the book, not everything else. The local paper that's when you've made it.

Speaker 3: 1:02:52

I love it. It's true, that's exactly right.

Speaker 2: 1:02:56

We've been talking with Doug Milville. He's the author of Invisible Generals. It's a family story but it's, more importantly, a military story, but also it's our nation's story. Go check it out. You can find it on Amazon, you can google it. We'll put up the links in the show notes.

Speaker 2: 1:03:13

Folks, Doug, thank you so much for joining us on Coming Home Well. What a wonderful story, what a wonderful history lesson, because it's a lot of history in the book as well and there's so many of these personal, small anecdotes that really make it a great story to read. But also you're like, oh, this is history but it's not, like you know, just like the big picture. There's a lot of small details that have made it in that. I personally always enjoy those little nuggets of information that somebody has thought of or remembered or shared or that probably wasn't written down anywhere or it's been long buried in some archive. Doug, you did a great job on the book and I'm sure it was a labor of love, but hopefully it's a commercial success as well. Folks, go check out Doug Melville's Invisible Generals and thank you so much for joining us on Coming Home Well thank you, I appreciate it every minute.

Speaker 1: 1:04:06

Thanks for joining us this week on Coming Home Well with Dr Tyler Piran. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social media or leave a rating and a review. Thanks again, and until all are home and all are well, this is Coming Home Well.