INVISIBLE GENERALS

A descendant of the first two Black generals in U.S. military history traces the difficult course of their careers.

Benjamin Oliver Davis (1877-1970) was the brilliant, driven son of a Black civil servant in the post–Civil War federal government who “demonstrated for others, foremost his children, what it meant to work within a system to help evolve it—to build political and financial capital.” Louis Davis’ networking skills didn’t help Ollie much, for, determined to become a military officer, he discovered that, “for political reasons, President William McKinley wouldn’t appoint a Black man to West Point.” He enlisted instead, and so distinguished was his service that he became one of only two commissioned Black officers in the entire Army. Eventually he would attain the rank of general, as would his son, Benjamin Davis Jr. (1912-2002), Melville’s great-uncle, who attained renown as one of the Tuskegee Airman, a group that has since been subjected to “Disneyfication.” Ironically, after the war, when the military began planning to integrate, Ollie was forced to retire by President Harry S. Truman, who “was no saint when it came to race relations.” The newly minted Air Force beat Truman to the punch by voluntarily integrating, and Davis Jr. was instrumental in that fact. Melville traces the travails his ancestors faced while building records of excellence in a military that, it often appeared, only grudgingly accepted them. Moreover, he recounts his own efforts to be sure they are properly recognized and honored. “I can see how the quest never ends,” Melville writes, and one aspect of that quest is for his military ancestors to be thought of as they wished: Americans, period. “Black history,” he writes, “is American history—even that which has been invisible until now.”

A thoughtful, highly readable blend of family and military history.