"Once you get with a unit and you start working as a team, color never comes up." (Video interview, 29:30)

Born in Tuskegee, Alabama, home to the famed aviation school for African Americans, Willie Boyd naturally dreamed of flying as a young boy working on a farm. He volunteered for flight school and did two tours of duty in Vietnam, flying an air ambulance as the only black man in his platoon. He was shot down three times but never captured or injured badly enough to stop him from going out after more casualties of war.

"People look at me and thought, This guy can do it."

James W. Allen's story

"I am an American. And when I go home [from Korea], I can't even sit and eat where I want to."

Charles Earnest Berry's story

"You feel like you're fighting for someone's else's freedom and you don't have your own."

Daniel Edward Burress' story

"... I'm up here in Alaska, and I got this white woman rubbing my back. This is not going to work, you know?"

Terona Chivers' story

"I almost went native and became an advocate for protection for the people."

James Franklin McCall's story

"There was a very low threat as long as you obeyed the rules."

Marion Anthony Marshall's story

"My military experience was the tool which I used to be a successful candidate in anything I did."

Michael Mills' story

"I didn't see it as breaking a barrier. I saw an opportunity was presented to me..."

Solomon Reed's story

"Because I made it, I have what they call survivor's guilt."

Robert Lee Rice's story

"... I will do whatever it takes to make sure that soldiers have the best chance to survive."

Donald L. Scott's story

"You depended on the very people who were stealing from you."

Walter L. Washington's story