; Whereas during World War II, the Army's 92nd Infantry Division, better known as the Buffalo Soldiers , which traces its direct lineage back to the 9th and 10th Cavalry units from 1866 to the early 1890s, was the only Black segregated unit to experience combat during the Italian campaign of 1944–1945 with several members later earning Medals of Honor for bravery; Whereas Reverend Benjamin Hooks, who served in the 92nd Division, found himself in the humiliating position of guarding Italian prisoners of war who were allowed to eat in restaurants that were off-limits to him; Whereas even after President Truman issued Executive Order 9981 desegregating the military on July 26, 1948, discrimination continued; Whereas in 1946, when Charles and Medgar Evers tried to register to vote, they were turned away at the polling station; Whereas after serving overseas in the Army, Charles and Medgar Evers returned home to Mississippi where, in 1952, they began to organize voter registration drives for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); Whereas Oliver L. Brown, a World War II Army veteran from Kansas, and Harry Briggs, a World War II sailor from South Carolina, were the fathers of two of the five named plaintiffs in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka and Briggs v. Elliott, the historic school desegregation cases of 1954; Whereas the Black heroes and heroines of World War II and the Korean War, such as Private Sarah Keys and Women's Army Corps (WAC) officer Dovey Roundtree, won significant victories against discrimination in interstate transportation in landmark civil rights cases, including Keys v. Carolina Coach Company, which was decided in 1955, six days before Rosa Parks' historic protest of Alabama's Jim Crow laws in Montgomery; Whereas in his address at Riverside Church on April 4, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., commented on the irony of Blacks fighting in Vietnam to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia while not enjoying the same rights at home