Navy Cross and Medal of Honor

The campaign

A hero the Navy would not identify

In the weeks after Pearl Harbor the Navy released accounts of individual conduct, including that of an unnamed Black messman. It did not release his name. For the Black press this was the story: not only what the man had done, but that the Navy would not say who he was.

The NAACP’s executive secretary, Walter White, wrote to President Roosevelt and to Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox urging that the sailor be recognised. The Pittsburgh Courier, then the most widely read Black newspaper in the country, pressed hardest. It obtained the name and announced it in March 1942 — three months after the attack — with research assistance from Lawrence D. Reddick, curator of the Schomburg Collection at the New York Public Library.

What the Courier asked for is worth stating precisely, because it is usually described wrongly. Its central demand was not a medal. It was the abolition of the Navy’s rating restrictions. Its editorial line held that the greatest honour the Navy could pay Miller would be to strike the rules that had confined him to the Steward’s Branch in the first place, so that Black Americans could serve in any capacity. Later in 1942 it pressed for Miller to be brought home to tour, as white heroes were being toured.

A parallel campaign sought his admission to the U.S. Naval Academy. Black newspapers printed clip-out coupons addressed to Roosevelt. The Navy declined on age grounds — Miller was twenty-three, and candidates had to be between seventeen and twenty-one. That correspondence survives: Record Group 80 at the National Archives holds a file unit titled “Dorie Miller” within the series Correspondence Relating to Discrimination, 1941–1944.

Precedence

In May 1942 the Navy Cross ranked third

This matters to how the award should be read. The Act of 4 February 1919, which created the decoration, enumerates the Navy’s awards in the order Medal of Honor, Distinguished Service Medal, Navy Cross — and the Navy Cross section expressly covers heroism or service “not being sufficient to justify the award of a medal of honor or a distinguished-service medal.” That subordinating clause is the evidence: in 1942 the Navy Cross sat third.

The Act of 7 August 1942 re-enumerated them as Medal of Honor, Navy Cross, Distinguished Service Medal, dropped the subordinating clause, and restricted the Navy Cross to extraordinary heroism in combat. Miller received his ten weeks before that change.

One caution, in the interest of precision: neither statute uses the word “precedence.” The elevation is carried by the re-ordering and the removal of the subordinating language, then implemented through Navy regulations. It is accurate to say the Navy Cross moved above the Distinguished Service Medal on 7 August 1942; it is not accurate to say the act declared a precedence, because it did not use that term.

The refusal

What is documented, and what is not

Bills were introduced in 1942 to award Miller the Medal of Honor. They failed, and Roosevelt approved the Navy Cross instead. That much is stated by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Beyond it, the record thins quickly. Secondary accounts variously name Representative Carl Vinson of Georgia, chairman of the House Naval Affairs Committee, as having opposed the award; some name Secretary Knox as well; one adds a rationale about the floor privileges that Medal of Honor recipients then enjoyed in Congress. These accounts do not agree with each other, and this site has not found a primary document behind any of them.

The names usually given for the 1942 bills — Representative John Dingell Sr. of Michigan and Senator James Mead of New York — rest on a single secondary source. The bill numbers could not be verified: GovInfo’s coverage of bill texts begins in 1993, and the 1942 Congressional Record was not reachable. Treat the 1942 legislative detail as reported rather than established.

Since

Eighty years of bills

Legislation to award Miller the Medal of Honor has been introduced repeatedly in recent Congresses. The status data below comes from GovInfo’s official bill-status records.

H.R. 2335 was introduced on National Medal of Honor Day. No Senate companion measure has been identified for any of the three. Separately — and not to be confused with these — Congressional Gold Medal bills were introduced as H.R. 6990 in the 117th Congress and H.R. 1252 in the 118th, both by Rep. Mfume. A Congressional Gold Medal is a different honour, awarded by Congress rather than by the President on behalf of the armed services.

A claim that a Medal of Honor measure has been introduced every year since 2015 appears in a congressional press release. This site could not verify it; no Medal of Honor bill was found in the 117th Congress.

Where it stands

Doris Miller has not been awarded the Medal of Honor. He holds the Navy Cross and a Purple Heart. The Congressional Medal of Honor Society’s roster of recipients for 7 December 1941 does not include him, and the fact that bills continue to be introduced is itself confirmation that the award has never been made.