He was a member of the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Vietnam Pfc. Olive threw his body on a grenade saving four comrades in the process.
In January 1964, during Olive’s second year of high school, the 24th Amendment was ratified, guaranteeing the right to vote without paying poll taxes that had been used to suppress the black vote in the South.
When the school year ended in 1964, Olive became a volunteer in The Mississippi Summer Project to register black voters.
“It was the most incredible display of selfless bravery I ever witnessed,” Texan Jimmy Stanford, a lieutenant in the 173rd Airborne Brigade Stanford and one of the four men Olive saved, said later.
Olive III was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor by President Lyndon B. Johnson on April 21, 1966, becoming the first black recipient of the Medal of Honor in the Vietnam War.
