Gen. Benjamin O. Davis Jr. after receiving his fourth star from President Bill Clinton, December 8, 1998. Biographical Passage about Benjamin O. Davis Jr. “The privileges of being an American belong to those brave enough to fight for them.”      — Benjamin O. Davis Jr. In 1936 Benjamin O. Davis Jr. became the first black student to graduate from West Point in the 20th century. He graduated 35th in a class of 276 students. While at West Point, he was officially “silenced” by his classmates: no one spoke to him for four years except in the line of duty. Davis remembers, “When we traveled to football games on buses or trains, I had a seat to myself.… I lived alone in whatever quarters were provided.… Except for tutoring some underclassmen...I had no conversations with other cadets.” Cadets use silencing to punish a classmate who is guilty of wrongdoing. Benjamin Davis was guilty of nothing but being black. “It was designed to make me buckle, but I refused to buckle. They didn’t understand that I was going to stay there, and I was going to graduate. I was not missing anything by not associating with them. They were missing a great deal by not knowing me.” When Davis graduated he applied for pilot training but was turned down because there were no black units in the Army Air Corps to which he could be assigned. While he was serving in the infantry in 1940, this policy was reconsidered, and Davis was sent to Tuskegee for pilot training. Because of the war and his ability, he was quickly promoted to lieutenant colonel, and he commanded the 99th Fighter Squadron in combat. After one year with this all-black unit in Italy, Davis was promoted to colonel and asked to lead the 322nd Fighter Group. Under Davis’s superb leadership, the Tuskegee Airmen earned the highest reputation, among both Allied and enemy pilots, for their achievements as fighter escort pilots. While under the protection of Davis’s fighter escort unit, not one bomber was ever lost to the enemy. In 1948 President Truman’s Executive Order 9981 ended segregation in the services, and Benjamin O. Davis Jr. continued his life of accomplishments. In 1954 Davis became the first black general in the U.S. Air Force. He was the first black man to command an Army air base and the first to become a lieutenant general. Following duty in Korea, General Davis was assigned as chief of staff for the United Nations Command and the U.S. forces in Korea. In 1967 he assumed command of the 13th Air Force. General Davis retired in 1970. In 1975 President Ford appointed him assistant secretary of transportation. In 1998 President Clinton advanced him to the rank of four-star general. The Tuskegee Airmen who served under Davis remember him as stern but inspiring. One said that Davis was “the most positive commander I ever had. He stressed the awful price of failure.” Another said, “Davis was respected by most and hated by some, but it was because of the discipline he exacted that we were able to make the record we did.”