Forgotten Genius Fridays | STM Daily News

Before the Tuskegee Airmen challenged segregation in the skies over World War II, another barrier was being broken within the ranks of the United States Army.

His name was Benjamin O. Davis Sr.

On October 25, 1940, Davis was promoted to brigadier general, becoming the first African American general officer in the Regular Army and the U.S. armed forces. His promotion represented an extraordinary milestone in a military that was still officially segregated.

But Davis’s story didn’t begin with stars on his shoulders.

It began more than four decades earlier.

From Volunteer to Buffalo Soldier

Born in Washington, D.C., on July 1, 1877, Davis entered military service during the Spanish-American War in 1898, serving as a temporary first lieutenant with the 8th United States Volunteer Infantry.

After that unit was mustered out, Davis made a consequential decision. In June 1899, he enlisted as a private in the Regular Army’s 9th Cavalry Regiment.

The 9th Cavalry was one of the famed Black regiments whose soldiers became widely known as the Buffalo Soldiers.

Davis quickly advanced through the enlisted ranks, becoming a corporal and then squadron sergeant major. In February 1901, he received a commission as a second lieutenant of cavalry in the Regular Army.

His journey through the ranks had begun.

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Serving an Army That Wasn’t Equal

Davis would serve his country for decades, but his career unfolded inside an institution constrained by racial segregation.

Assignments available to Black officers were limited, particularly because military practices sought to prevent Black officers from commanding white soldiers. Davis consequently spent portions of his career teaching military science at historically Black institutions, including Wilberforce University and Tuskegee Institute, and served as a military attaché in Liberia.

These assignments were important, but they also reflected the racial restrictions under which Black Army officers served.

Despite those obstacles, Davis continued advancing.

He became a lieutenant colonel in 1920 and a colonel in 1930.

Then came 1940.

A Star That Made History

On October 25, 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt promoted Benjamin O. Davis Sr. to brigadier general.

For the first time, a Black officer wore a general’s star in the Regular Army.

The significance extended beyond Davis himself. Black Americans had served in the nation’s armed forces from its earliest conflicts, yet the highest levels of military leadership had remained closed to them.

Davis had broken through that barrier.

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Yet the military remained segregated.

Becoming a general did not make segregation disappear.

Instead, Davis would spend part of World War II confronting some of its consequences.

A General Confronts Discrimination

During World War II, Davis served with the Army’s Inspector General organization and undertook assignments involving the conditions and treatment of Black troops.

He traveled extensively, investigated problems affecting soldiers and units, and advised military leaders on matters involving Black servicemen.

His work took him overseas as well. In 1942, he was sent to the European Theater on special duty concerning issues affecting Black troops. He later served in Paris as special assistant to the commanding general of the Communications Zone.

His Distinguished Service Medal citation credited his investigations and advice with helping produce fairer solutions to problems involving soldiers and contributing to broader War Department policy.

Davis therefore occupied an unusual position.

He was simultaneously a senior officer in the United States Army and a Black American serving inside a military whose segregation policies continued to restrict people who looked like him.

Then Came His Son

There is another remarkable dimension to the Benjamin O. Davis story.

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While Davis Sr. was breaking barriers within the Army, his son was preparing to break barriers in the air.

Benjamin O. Davis Jr. graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1936 after enduring years of racial isolation from fellow cadets. He would later become a military pilot and eventually command both the 99th Fighter Squadron and the 332nd Fighter Group, becoming one of the most important leaders associated with the Tuskegee Airmen.

For a period, father and son represented an extraordinary rarity within the U.S. military: two Black career officers operating at a time when opportunities for Black commissioned officers remained severely restricted.

Their stories would eventually become intertwined with one of the most important experiments in American military history.

The Tuskegee Airmen.

Fifty Years of Service

Benjamin O. Davis Sr. retired from active military service on July 14, 1948, completing approximately 50 years of service.

Less than two weeks later, on July 26, President Harry S. Truman issued Executive Order 9981, declaring a policy of equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed services regardless of race, color, religion or national origin.

The transformation of the military would take years.

But Davis had spent much of his career pushing against the barriers that made such a transformation necessary.

He died on November 26, 1970, and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

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Among his decorations were the Distinguished Service Medal, Bronze Star Medal, France’s Croix de Guerre with Palm, and Liberia’s Order of the Star of Africa.

Why Benjamin O. Davis Sr. Matters

It would be easy to remember Benjamin O. Davis Sr. simply as the first Black general in American military history.

But his significance runs deeper.

He rose from private to general in an institution that placed substantial racial barriers in his path. He served with the Buffalo Soldiers, educated future officers, represented the United States overseas and advised military leaders about the treatment of Black troops during World War II.

And his story became the first chapter of an extraordinary father-and-son legacy.

Benjamin O. Davis Sr. broke one barrier.

His son would soon take the fight into the skies.

Next in our special series: The Tuskegee Airmen — The Red Tails Who Fought Two Wars.

Then, on the following Forgotten Genius Friday, we’ll tell the remarkable story of Benjamin O. Davis Jr.—from four years of isolation at West Point to commanding the Tuskegee Airmen and ultimately wearing four stars.

Forgotten Genius Fridays is an STM Daily News series highlighting innovators, pioneers and historical figures whose achievements deserve a larger place in our collective memory.

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Sources & Related Reading

Primary source: U.S. Army Center of Military History — Benjamin O. Davis Sr. — detailed official chronology of his Army service and historic promotion. 

Biography: National Museum of the United States Army — Benjamin O. Davis Sr. — particularly useful for his Buffalo Soldier service, segregation-era assignments and World War II work. 

Related: National Park Service — Benjamin O. Davis Jr. — provides the bridge to the next generation and the Tuskegee Airmen. 

Forgotten Genius Friday: Daniel Hale Williams and Vivien Thomas helped push cardiac surgery from the nearly unthinkable toward modern medicine.

Today, open-heart surgery is performed routinely in hospitals around the world. Surgeons can repair defective valves, bypass blocked arteries and correct complex congenital heart defects using technology that would have seemed almost unimaginable little more than a century ago.

Black Pioneers Who Helped Change Heart Surgery

But the road to modern heart surgery includes two remarkable Black medical pioneers whose contributions came more than 50 years apart: Dr. Daniel Hale Williams and Vivien Thomas.

One demonstrated that surgeons could successfully intervene in injuries involving the heart at a time when such operations were considered extraordinarily dangerous.

The other helped develop an operation that opened a new era of cardiac surgery.

Their stories belong together.

Daniel Hale Williams and the 1893 Operation

In 1893, surgery was dramatically different from what patients experience today.

There were no antibiotics. Blood typing had yet to become standard medical knowledge. Modern blood transfusions, intensive-care units and heart-lung machines did not exist.

Against that backdrop, Dr. Daniel Hale Williams performed an extraordinary operation at Provident Hospital in Chicago.

Williams, born in 1856, was already breaking barriers in American medicine. He founded Provident Hospital and Training School in 1891, creating an institution where Black doctors and nurses could receive training and Black patients could obtain medical treatment at a time when segregation severely restricted their access to many hospitals.

Then came a patient named James Cornish.

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Cornish had suffered a serious stab wound to the chest. Williams opened his chest and operated on the structures surrounding the heart, including repairing the pericardium—the protective sac surrounding the heart.

Cornish survived.

The operation became one of the most celebrated moments in the history of American surgery.

Was It Really the First Open-Heart Surgery?

Here is where the history requires some clarification.

Williams is frequently credited with performing the world’s first successful open-heart operation. The U.S. National Library of Medicine, for example, describes his 1893 procedure as the world’s first open-heart surgery.

However, terminology has changed.

Under today’s medical definition, “open-heart surgery” usually refers to an operation performed directly on or inside the heart, frequently with the assistance of cardiopulmonary bypass.

Williams’s operation did not involve opening the chambers of the heart.

For that reason, describing his achievement as one of the earliest successful cardiac operations provides a more precise historical description.

That clarification doesn’t diminish Williams’s accomplishment.

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Operating successfully in the chest near the heart in 1893—without antibiotics, modern imaging, sophisticated anesthesia, blood banking or intensive postoperative care—was an extraordinary achievement.

And Williams helped demonstrate something enormously important:

The heart was not necessarily beyond the reach of surgery.

Fifty Years Later: Another Breakthrough

Fast-forward approximately half a century.

Another Black medical pioneer would play a critical role in pushing heart surgery forward.

His name was Vivien Thomas.

Thomas dreamed of becoming a doctor, but the economic devastation of the Great Depression wiped out the money he had saved for medical school.

In 1930, he began working as a laboratory assistant for surgeon Alfred Blalock at Vanderbilt University.

Thomas quickly proved extraordinarily talented at experimental surgery.

When Blalock moved to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore in 1941, Thomas went with him.

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There, Thomas would become part of one of the most important developments in the history of cardiac surgery.

The “Blue Baby” Problem

Some children are born with a combination of heart abnormalities called Tetralogy of Fallot.

Because insufficient oxygen reaches their bloodstream, severely affected children can develop a bluish coloration—leading to the historical term “blue baby syndrome.”

At the time, there was little doctors could do for many of these children.

Pediatric cardiologist Dr. Helen Taussig believed a surgical procedure might increase blood flow to the lungs and improve oxygenation.

The challenge was figuring out how to do it.

That’s where Blalock and Thomas entered the story.

Vivien Thomas Builds the Operation

Thomas performed extensive laboratory work developing and perfecting a surgical method that could redirect blood toward the lungs.

Johns Hopkins says Thomas developed and tested the procedure in animals before its first use on a human patient.

His surgical skill became so important that when the first operation was performed, Thomas was present in the operating room guiding Blalock.

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On November 29, 1944, the surgical team operated on an 18-month-old child suffering from Tetralogy of Fallot.

The operation successfully increased blood flow to the lungs. Johns Hopkins credits the procedure with eventually saving thousands of children’s lives and helping launch the modern era of cardiac surgery.

It became known for decades as the Blalock-Taussig shunt.

One name was conspicuously missing.

Thomas.

Recognition Comes Decades Later

Despite Thomas’s enormous contribution, racial discrimination shaped both his career and the recognition he received.

Thomas did not have a medical degree and initially worked under classifications and compensation that failed to reflect the sophisticated surgical research he was actually performing.

His role in developing the operation also wasn’t properly credited in the original published account of the procedure. Johns Hopkins itself now describes Thomas as an essential pioneer and notes that he was not given credit when details of the surgery were published in 1945.

Recognition eventually came.

In 1976, Johns Hopkins awarded Thomas an honorary Doctor of Laws degree, and his portrait was placed at the institution.

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Even more significantly, Johns Hopkins today incorporates his name into the Blalock-Taussig-Thomas Pediatric and Congenital Heart Center.

History finally added the name that had been missing.

Two Men, Two Eras, One Medical Revolution

Daniel Hale Williams and Vivien Thomas never worked together.

Their breakthroughs happened more than five decades apart.

Their careers were very different.

Williams was a physician, surgeon, hospital founder and medical educator.

Thomas never received the opportunity to become the physician he originally hoped to be, yet became a master surgical technician, researcher and teacher whose skills influenced generations of surgeons.

But their stories intersect in the history of cardiac surgery.

1893 — Daniel Hale Williams demonstrated that extraordinary surgical intervention around the heart could succeed.

1944 — Vivien Thomas helped develop a procedure that demonstrated surgeons could deliberately alter cardiovascular circulation to save children born with serious heart defects.

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The 1944 breakthrough was so important that Johns Hopkins describes it as opening the door to today’s heart surgery.

Neither achievement was modern open-heart surgery as we understand it today. The development of cardiopulmonary bypass and the heart-lung machine during the following decade would make operations inside a temporarily stopped heart practical.

But Williams and Thomas helped establish something equally important:

the possibility that surgeons could successfully intervene when the human heart itself was at risk.

Their contributions helped transform cardiac surgery from a medical frontier into one of modern medicine’s most remarkable achievements.

Forgotten Genius Friday

Forgotten Genius Friday celebrates innovators, inventors, scientists and pioneers whose contributions helped shape our modern world but whose names aren’t always as familiar as their accomplishments.

Did you know about Daniel Hale Williams or Vivien Thomas? Join the conversation in the comments, share this story and subscribe to the STM Daily News newsletter for more stories about the people who helped change history.

Source

National Library of Medicine — Daniel Hale Williams, M.D.
Background on Williams, Provident Hospital, and his landmark 1893 cardiac operation.
Daniel Hale Williams — National Library of Medicine

Johns Hopkins Medicine — History of Innovation in Cardiac Surgery
Documents Vivien Thomas’s role in developing the Blue Baby procedure and the historic November 29, 1944 operation. Johns Hopkins describes it as the beginning of a new era in cardiac surgery. 
Johns Hopkins Cardiac Surgery Research Lab History

Related External Links

Johns Hopkins — Innovations in Heart Medicine
Explains how Thomas, Alfred Blalock, Helen Taussig and their colleagues developed the Blue Baby operation and how it helped open the door to modern cardiac surgery. 
Innovations in Heart Medicine

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Johns Hopkins — Vivien Thomas Biography
Especially useful for the Forgotten Genius angle. Johns Hopkins states that Thomas developed and tested the procedure in animals and stood behind Blalock guiding him during the first human operation; Thomas was not credited in the original published report. 
Vivien Thomas — Johns Hopkins Medicine

Johns Hopkins — Celebrating a Transformative Medical Milestone
A detailed account of the first Blue Baby operation on 18-month-old Eileen Saxon in 1944 and Thomas’s role in the operating room. 
75th Anniversary of the Blue Baby Operation

PubMed — Daniel Hale Williams in Proper Perspective
A useful scholarly source confirming that Williams successfully sutured a pericardial laceration caused by a stab wound in 1893 and that the patient recovered. 
Daniel Hale Williams — PubMed

NIH/PMC — Cardiac Surgery: A Century of Progress
Provides broader historical context and notes that Williams’s 1893 operation was among the earliest successful repairs of pericardial wounds, following Henry C. Dalton’s 1891 operation. This is particularly valuable for avoiding the oversimplified claim that Williams indisputably performed history’s first heart operation. 
Cardiac Surgery: A Century of Progress

When Americans think about the pioneers of the automobile industry, names like Henry Ford, Ransom Olds and the Dodge brothers usually come to mind.

But in a small Ohio town more than a century ago, another automotive entrepreneur was attempting something extraordinary.

His name was Frederick Douglass Patterson.

Patterson took a successful Black-owned carriage company established by his father and guided it into the emerging automobile age. In 1915, C.R. Patterson & Sons introduced the Patterson-Greenfield automobile, making the company an extraordinary part of both Black history and American automotive history.

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture describes C.R. Patterson & Sons as the only African American-owned and operated automobile company in American history.

But Frederick Patterson’s story actually begins a generation earlier.

From Slavery to Entrepreneurship

Frederick’s father, Charles Richard “C.R.” Patterson, was born in Virginia in 1833.

Historical accounts differ regarding exactly how the Patterson family left Virginia and reached Ohio, but records place the family in Greenfield, Ohio, by the middle of the 19th century.

C.R. learned blacksmithing and became skilled in the carriage-making trade.

In 1873, he entered a business partnership with white carriage maker J.P. Lowe. Twenty years later, Patterson acquired Lowe’s interest and eventually operated the business as C.R. Patterson & Sons.

The company developed a reputation for quality workmanship, producing numerous styles of horse-drawn vehicles.

By the beginning of the 20th century, the business employed an integrated workforce and had become a successful manufacturing operation.

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But transportation was changing.

And C.R.’s son Frederick saw what was coming.

Frederick Patterson Takes the Wheel

Frederick Douglass Patterson was born in Greenfield in 1871.

His path to success wasn’t easy.

According to the Historical Society of Greenfield and the Automotive Hall of Fame, Frederick was initially denied admission to Greenfield’s white high school because he was Black. His father challenged the discrimination, and Frederick was eventually admitted.

He later attended The Ohio State University, where he made history again as the university’s first Black football player.

Eventually, Frederick returned to Greenfield and became involved with the family business.

When C.R. Patterson died in 1910, Frederick assumed control of the company.

And he faced a major decision.

America was falling in love with the automobile.

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The horse-drawn carriage—the foundation of the Patterson family’s success—was headed toward obsolescence.

Rather than fight the change, Frederick embraced it.

From Carriages to Cars

C.R. Patterson & Sons began repairing and servicing automobiles as the new machines became increasingly common.

That work gave Patterson employees valuable experience with automobile construction and mechanical systems.

Then Frederick made the leap from repairing automobiles to building them.

On September 23, 1915, the Patterson-Greenfield automobile was introduced in Greenfield’s local newspaper.

The company advertised the car for $685.

The Patterson-Greenfield was designed as a practical family automobile and featured equipment including a Continental four-cylinder engine, electric starting and lighting and a split windshield for ventilation.

Various body styles were offered during the company’s brief automobile-production period, including coupes, sedans and even a sporty model called the Red Devil.

A Black-owned company in small-town Ohio had entered America’s rapidly expanding automobile industry.

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Taking On an Industry That Was Changing Fast

Unfortunately, Patterson wasn’t simply competing against other automobiles.

He was competing against a revolution in manufacturing.

Companies such as Ford were transforming automobile production through assembly-line techniques and enormous economies of scale.

Large manufacturers could purchase components in huge quantities and produce automobiles faster and more cheaply.

C.R. Patterson & Sons operated on a much smaller scale.

Its reputation for craftsmanship could not overcome the enormous economic advantages enjoyed by mass-production manufacturers.

The Patterson-Greenfield automobile was produced from approximately 1915 to 1918.

Exactly how many were manufactured remains uncertain. Historical estimates vary, and the Historical Society of Greenfield states plainly that the number built and sold is not known.

Unfortunately, no Patterson-Greenfield automobile is known to survive today.

But the end of passenger-car production wasn’t the end of the Patterson company.

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Patterson Reinvents the Business Again

Frederick pivoted.

Instead of trying to compete directly with Detroit’s increasingly powerful passenger-car manufacturers, C.R. Patterson & Sons moved toward commercial vehicles.

The company manufactured truck and bus bodies, eventually finding an important market producing buses for schools.

It was another example of Patterson’s willingness to adapt the family company as transportation technology changed.

Frederick was also active beyond the factory.

He participated in Greenfield civic life and became involved with the National Negro Business League, the organization founded by Booker T. Washington to encourage Black entrepreneurship and economic development.

Frederick served as one of the organization’s vice presidents.

The Patterson Story Continues

Frederick Patterson died in 1932.

His sons continued operating the family business, but economic pressures eventually became too great.

C.R. Patterson & Sons finally closed in 1939.

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The company had survived for decades through one of the greatest technological transformations in transportation history—from horse-drawn carriages to automobiles and motorized buses.

Yet today, relatively few Americans know the Patterson name.

More Than a Footnote in Automotive History

The story of Frederick Patterson deserves more than a passing mention during Black History Month.

He was an entrepreneur who recognized technological disruption and attempted to reposition a family manufacturing company for an entirely new era.

His father had built a successful carriage business at a time when opportunities for Black entrepreneurs were severely restricted.

Frederick took that foundation and moved the company into one of the most important emerging industries of the 20th century.

He wasn’t merely watching the automobile revolution.

He participated in it.

And more than a century after the Patterson-Greenfield first appeared on the streets of Ohio, the company remains a remarkable chapter in American history.

A Black family built carriages.

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Then they built automobiles.

Then they built buses.

And for a brief but extraordinary period, Frederick Douglass Patterson stood among America’s automobile manufacturers.

That’s a legacy worth remembering.

Forgotten Genius Friday

Forgotten Genius Friday is an STM Daily News series highlighting innovators, inventors, entrepreneurs and pioneers whose contributions helped shape the world but whose stories are too often overlooked.

What other forgotten innovator should we feature? Leave a comment and join the conversation.

Source and Related Links

Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture — The Only African American Automobile CompanyAutomotive Hall of Fame — Frederick Douglass PattersonHistorical Society of Greenfield — Patterson Automobile History