President Obama Awards 24 Veterans Medals Of Honor

The saddest part is that most of the recipients were not alive to accept their honor.

Via CNN reports:

If not for the hue of their skin or their ethnicity, 24 soldiers who faced death in service to their nation would have received the most prestigious medals for their valor long ago.

But they were born and fought in a time when such deeds were not always fairly acknowledged.

On Tuesday, the U.S. government corrected the oversight.

President Barack Obama honored 24 Army veterans with the Medal of Honor — the country’s highest military award, given to American soldiers who display “gallantry above and beyond the call of duty ” — for their combat actions in Vietnam, Korea and World War II.

“No nation is perfect, but here … we confront our imperfections and face a sometimes painful past, including the truth that some of these soldiers fought and died for a country that did not always see them as equal,” Obama said.

Only three of the soldiers are alive to receive the recognition.

The rest — soldiers with last names including Garcia and Weinstein and Negron — are dead.

Of the 24 honored, 10 never came home. The body of one — Cpl. Joe Baldonado — has never been recovered, Obama said.

This is so bittersweet. Lenny Kravitz was actually among the relatives of the 21 veterans who received the medal posthumously. His late uncle Leonard Kravitz was one of the men honored.

Getty Images