Dorie Miller goes to Annapolis

This thread is based on a newspaper article sample, advocating this course of action, in a big WWII docs box set I was given a few yrs ago- WI Dorie Miller had been allowed into Annapolis instead of, despite his Navy Cross, continuing to being relegated to the USN Mess Steward branch and being lost with the USS LISCOMBE BAY off Tarawa in 1943 ? WI the lobbying of Eleanor, the NAACP and other sympathetic voices had managed to facilitate Dorie's entry into the Naval Academy ? How much more would the cause of blacks in the US armed forces and civil rights generally have been accelerated (OTL the USN theoretically desregregated all branches and port facilities during 1944-45 after the Port Chicago explosion, but nevertheless the vast majority of blacks in the USN remained in the mess stewards' branch) ?
 
This thread is based on a newspaper article sample, advocating this course of action, in a big WWII docs box set I was given a few yrs ago- WI Dorie Miller had been allowed into Annapolis instead of, despite his Navy Cross, continuing to being relegated to the USN Mess Steward branch and being lost with the USS LISCOMBE BAY off Tarawa in 1943 ? WI the lobbying of Eleanor, the NAACP and other sympathetic voices had managed to facilitate Dorie's entry into the Naval Academy ? How much more would the cause of blacks in the US armed forces and civil rights generally have been accelerated (OTL the USN theoretically desregregated all branches and port facilities during 1944-45 after the Port Chicago explosion, but nevertheless the vast majority of blacks in the USN remained in the mess stewards' branch) ?
For those who have no clue, (as I wouldn't have had a couple of years ago), Dorie Miller was a black cook at Pearl Harbor. In the confusion of the raid, he ended up manning an AA gun under fire, and despite having no instruction on the gun.
 
Top