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PHOTOCOPIED October 2, 2002; NASM PRESERVATION COPY

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^[[Cols Dispatch Wed Nov 3,'54]]

General Hails His Promotion As 'Significant Thing in America'

TOKYO, NOV. 3-(INS)-Brig. Gen. Benjamin O. Davis, Jr, second Negro to become a general in the United States armed forces, said today his promotion was "one of the most significant things that has happened in Americca for a long, long time."

Davis formerly was commanding officer at Lockbourne Air Base at Columbus.

The 41-year-old West Point graduate, who holds one of the key staff jobs for the Air Force in the Far East, said racial segregation was proven unwise in the services for strictly practical reasons.

"In the Air Force of today," he said, "nothing stops a man but his own personal limitation."

"Segregation proved to be unwieldly and inefficient. There was a very poor use of manpower skills.

"The ending of segregating benefited the services on a strictly military basis."

Before the switch in policy, Davis served in segregated Negro units only. Opportunities open to white officers were closed to him, despite his education at the U.S. Military Academy.

But in 1948, under a presidential directive, segregation was ended in the Air Force.

Today Davis is a general officer in the Air Force and chief of operations in Gen. Earl E. Partridge's Far East Air Force headquarters.

In 1948 Davis was asked to sit in briefly with a commitee studying the problem of segregation in the armed forces.

But Sen. Stuart Symington, then secretary of the Air Force, ordered integration to take place immediately.

"The thing that was rather astounding," Davis said, "was the manner in which the whole thing developed. Integration was accomplished with so little trouble."

He added: 

"It was positively a correct move, resulting in a wide variety of benefits."

His father, the first Negro to become a general in the Army, commanded Negro troops only, even after gaining his star. But Davis, Jr., can serve in any capacity for which he is qualified.

He is a combat veteran with over 60 combat missions in the European theater. He is credited with shooting down one Nazi plane and damaging two others. He served at that time as commander of the famed all-Negro 90th Squadron.

Davis rarely used the word "segregation," preferring to call it the "old system" and today's integrated Air Force as the "new system."
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