*According to the historian Gail Buckley, the first Tuskegee combat pilots, who comprised the heroic 99th Pursuit Squadron, named her mother Lena Horne “Queen of the 99th.” In her splendid history, American Patriots, and in her family memoir, The Hornes, Buckley provides succinct details of their many exploits and awards, as well as vital statistics: “Black engineers built Burma’s Ledo Road, China’s Stilwell Road, and the Alcan Highway. . . . There were 165,000 black sailors (all messmen or stewards); 17,000 black marines, 5000 black Coast Guard, 4000 black WACs and WAVEs.” Only the Merchant Marines were integrated.