Lt Gen. Frank Petersen DFC

"Frank Petersen, the first black US Marine Corps pilot and general officer, took the Navy's entrance exam in 1950. The petty officer third class overseeing the test called him a few days later, asking, "Would you mind retaking the examination?"

It was not hard for the future three-star general to decode the reason for the request: his score was high, so he must have cheated. Again, he passed, and the petty officer exclaimed: "Petersen, my boy, the Navy has opportunities for guys like you... My, God, man, what a great steward you'd make!"

The remark was particularly painful for Petersen, who had turned to the military because he hoped it would provide an escape from racial prejudice in his native Kansas. He joined the US Navy as a seaman apprentice and entered the Naval Aviation Cadet Program, motivated by the recent Korean War death of Jesse Brown, the Navy's first black aviator.

President Truman had ordered the armed forces to desegregate in 1948, but Petersen later wrote that the Navy and Marine Corps were "the last to even entertain the idea of integrating their forces." And whenever he left the flight training base in Florida, bus drivers ordered him to the back of the coach and he was barred from sitting with white cadets in restaurants and cinemas.

He largely swallowed the treatment, he said, "I knew that I couldn't win if I were to tackle that, as opposed to getting my wings." One instructor tried to minimise his performance in the air, giving him poor ratings, but he said white peers came to his defence. He went on to fly 64 combat missions in Korea in 1953 and earned the Distinguished Flying Cross, among other decorations. In 1968, he did a tour of duty in Vietnam, commanding a squadron and serving in more than 250 missions. He received the Purple Heart for wounds suffered when he ejected after his plane was hit over the demilitarised zone."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/lieutenant-general-frank-petersen-decorated-aviator-who-overcame-racial-prejudice-to-become-the-us-marines-first-black-pilot-and-general-10502643.html