This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

And we return to our American stories.

Up next, a story on one of the seven African-Americans to receive our nation's highest award for valor in World War II, a Congressional Medal of Honor.

Here to tell the story of Lieutenant John Robert Fox is Kirk Higgins, the senior director of content at the Bill of Rights Institute.

Let's get into the story.

Take it away, Kirk.

It was the day after Christmas, 1944, in the pitched battles of World War II, were still raging.

The Germans would not surrender to Allied forces for another five months.

In Italy, the fighting remained fierce.

A U.S. Army lieutenant from an all-black regiment was perched on the second floor of a house in the village of Somalcolonia.

German forces were overrunning the village, but the brave lieutenant volunteered to stay behind in direct artillery fire from his second-story location.

Allied forces bombarded the Germans with the lieutenant's help,

but the German forces continued to advance.

Finally, as enemy soldiers closed in on his position,

Lieutenant John Robert Fox made a fateful call.

Pirate, there's more of them than there are of us.

Give them hell.

He radioed in an artillery strike on his own position, knowing it may cost him his life. John Robert Fox was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1915, the oldest of three sons.

He had a keen interest in science and began his college studies at the Ohio State University.

But he transferred to Wilberforce University, a historically black college,

because it was one of the few schools that would allow black students to participate in an ROTC program. Fox graduated with a degree

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