By Mac McEachin

Overlooking the wide expanse of the national mall, a stone’s throw to monuments honoring those who who served in the Vietnam, Korean, and Second World Wars, sits the National Museum of African American History and Culture. There, on its third floor, is one of the most moving and powerful testaments to service in the face of extraordinary prejudice: Double Victory: The African American Military Experience.

Today, in honor of Black History Month, we look back 50 years, when two of whom the museum so honors for their service made profound sacrifices for their country and their fellow servicemen.

On February 21, 1968, Clifford Chester Sims was a 25-year-old Staff Sergeant serving in Vietnam. Orphaned at an early age, he grew up in Florida, in a segregated south where he was unable to eat at the same lunch counters or drink from the same water fountains as whites. He joined the Army after graduating from high school in 1961.

Staff Sergeant Sims was leading his squad near the city of Hue, three weeks into the epic battle. Assaulting through intense enemy fire, Sims spotted a trigggered booby trap. He immediately warned his men to get back. With no hesitation, he launched himself upon the bomb, absorbing the blast. He saved the lives of his men, and for his actions that day, he was awarded the Medal of Honor.

Less than two months after Staff Sergeant Sims gallantly gave his life for his country, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Riots erupted around the country, most notably in Washington, D.C., where the neighborhoods of Shaw, H Street, and Columbia Heights burned. Our capitol and nation seemed torn asunder.

While D.C. burned, U.S. Air Force fighter pilot Lieutenant Colonel Fred V. Cherry was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. Colonel Cherry was tortured for 93 consecutive days and spent 702 days in solitary confinement.

Knowing Cherry grew up as a black man in the Jim Crow South, his captors sought to stir up racial hostility between him and his white, southern cellmate, Ensign Porter Halyburton. His captors hoped that Cherry might produce a propaganda triumph for North Vietnam. Despite brutal beatings, he refused to cave to the enemy. His strength and endurance throughout the torture didn’t drive a wedge between him and Halyburton, instead they became close friends.

“I was so inspired by Fred’s toughness,” Halyburton said. “He had grown up in the racial South [and] undergone a lot of discrimination and hardship. But he was such an ardent patriot. He loved this country. It inspired me, and it inspired a lot of others.”

This month we honor and remember great Americans such as Staff Sergeant Clifford Chester Sims and Colonel Fred Cherry. They served our imperfect nation, and they made it better, stronger, and more just. Their noncontingent commitment to our country is something I hope to emulate, especially in thinking about how honorable they were in the face of injustice. They aspired to a more perfect world, where patriotism, heroism, and honor know no race, color, or creed.

Mac McEachin is an Army veteran and a Veterans for American Ideals leader in Texas.