Black Medal of Honor Winners

In the last post, I wrote about how no blacks received the Medal of Honor during World War II because of systematic discrimination.

That was kind of strange because blacks had received the nation's highest honor all the way back to the beginning of it during the Civil War. Wikipedia has a very good entry on this at "List of African-American Medal of Honor Winners."

A total of 88 blacks had been awarded the Medal of Honor out of 3,464 as of June 2009. Eight were given out during peace time, including two of them to Robert Augustus sweeney who received two of them.

Wars and numbers of Medals Awarded to blacks.

CIVIL WAR-- 25
INDIAN WARS-- 18
SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR-- 6
WORLD WAR I-- 1
WORLD WAR II-- 7 (ALL AWARDED IN 1997)
KOREAN WAR-- 2
VIETNAM WAR-- 20

It's kind of strange that blacks would face the discrimination in World War II after receiving the award in so many wars before that, although, there wasn't but one in World War II.

I think more records from World War II should be opened to determine if more Medals of Honor are necessary.

Let's Be Fair. --Cooter