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When Dorie Miller took gun in hand--
Jim Crow started his last stand.
Our battle yet is far from won
But when it is, Jim Crow'll be done.
We gonna bury that son-of-a-gun!

- Langston Hughes, poet

By the time the epic film Pearl Harbor has swept across America, Dorie Miller, the first hero of World War II, will finally be well-known outside the African-American community. Portrayed in the movie by Oscar-winning actor Cuba Gooding Jr., Miller was a black messman who performed courageously during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor - and yet the U.S. Navy never removed him from his mess duties. At the time, the Navy's Jim Crow policies restricted blacks to the galley or wardroom serving officers.

Philip Klinkner, associate professor of government at Hamilton College, devoted a chapter to Dorie Miller in his award-winning 1999 book, The Unsteady March: The Rise and Decline of Racial Equality in America (University of Chicago Press).  In the book, Klinkner wrote, "Although black sailors had served ably since the Revolutionary War, in the 1920s the Navy began restricting blacks to work in the galleys, claiming that they lacked courage, skill and initiative."

Klinkner's describes Miller's heroic deeds on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese caught by surprise "the ill-prepared American naval and air forces:"

"One of the few heroes on this day of 'infamy' was Doris (Dorie) Miller, a crew member on the battleship West Virginia. Miller first helped carry his mortally wounded captain from the ship's burning bridge. Later, though untrained in the weapon, he manned a machine gun and began 'blazing away as though he had fired one all his life,' reported one eyewitness. Miller shot down two enemy aircraft before flames forced him from the gun. (Some unofficial accounts claimed he had shot down six planes.) He then helped pull wounded men from the water, 'thereby, unquestionably saving the lives of a number of people who might otherwise have been lost.' "

For his troubles, the Navy "refused to release Miller's name, referring to him only as 'unidentified Negro messman,'" according to the book. "Some writers contend that it did not want the first hero of the war to be a black man."

Black newspapers and civil rights organizations at the time found out Miller's name and publicized his heroics. Partly as a result of this publicity, the Navy in April 1942 agreed to accept blacks for general service in the Navy, Marine Corps and the Coast Guard. But blacks still trained and served in segregated units.

The Navy also awarded Miller the Navy Cross, its highest decoration. Despite this action, the Navy only raised his rank from Mess Attendant 2nd Class to Mess Attendant 1st Class. As Klinkner's book notes, "Thus, on Thanksgiving Day, 1943, when Miller went down at sea aboard the aircraft carrier Liscombe Bay, he was still waiting on white officers."

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