Grant Gordon
Photo: Courtesy of Geoff Gordon
PONTATOC, MISSISSIPPI
First Lt. Grant Gordon of the 320th was the only African American in his officer training class. Limited by quotas and shut out of the top ranks, black officers had no choice but to accept the Army’s Jim Crow system. He was 27 years old when he landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day with 70 men under his command. "We were all scared," he said 50 years after the invasion. After the war, Gordon settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he and his wife, Lucinda, raised two children. He was the first African American school principal in the city's public schools, where he worked for 35 years. He was active in the NAACP and the Urban League. He died in 2003 at age 86.