How Dorie Miller’s bravery helped fight Navy racism

On May 27, 1942, Dorie Miller was awarded the Navy Cross for actions at Pearl Harbor. From the article:

"Miller, known to many as “Dorie,” was born on October 12, 1919, during the darkest days of the lynching epidemic that blighted the South in the 20th century’s first decades. Only three years before Miller was born, his hometown of Waco became the scene of one of the most brutal lynchings on record when 17-year-old Jesse Washington was burned alive on the lawn of the city hall.

Miller was compelled to drop out of high school in order to help support his struggling family — “We were a little hungry in those days,” his mother later explained — but when he could not find work, in September 1939, at 19, he joined the U.S. Navy.

At that time, black men serving in the Navy were not only ineligible for promotion, they were consigned to the lowly messman branch, where they were tasked with making the beds and shining the shoes of their white officers and waiting on them in the officers’ mess."