Paul, the work you're doing is very important, as well as incredibly time consuming and emotionally draining. I am all too well aware of the lack of records documenting the major life events of African Americans.
The last thing I would do is to belittle your motivation and efforts or the amazing contributions of Cleophus to our country, but I don't think this situation is unique to African Americans who served in the military.
Cleophus has a lot in common with my husband, a White American who spent 26 years in the Air Force before retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel, flew 196 combat missions in Vietnam (that's the officially credited number - his logbook documents over 400, but many were classified or couldn't be claimed for other reasons), and ended up with about 30 medals, including the silver star awarded for his actions as a wild weasel pilot the first night of the fire bombing of Hanoi.
He died a year and a half ago and his children and I are still waiting for his funeral to be scheduled. I expect he will have an obituary after that occurs - if it ever does. First I was told there would be a 1 to 1.5 year wait and would be contacted in 9 months to schedule it. They contacted me in 11 months, but only to say there would be a 6-9 month wait for them to contact me to schedule it in about a year and they offered to expedite it if I am willing to forego the military honors he is entitled to. I was so insulted by this that I wrote to my congressional representative and both senators asking them to persuade the military to treat deceased veterans better. Two of them sent an automated response, indicating that they received my message and would address it soon. The third didn't even do that, but all three added me to their mailing list, regularly telling me all about how hard they're working on my behalf and inviting me to contribute to their campaigns.
Since there has been no obituary, I wouldn't expect there to be any newspaper.com, genealogybank.com, or obitsarchive.com records for him and you won't find any of his three marriage records anywhere either. Like Cleophus, he also does not have a Wikipedia article.
EDITED TO ADD: Unlike Cleophus, whose profile fully honors his life, thanks to Paul's efforts, my husband's profile is very incomplete. Working on it is still too traumatic for me, so it just has to wait until I am able to do it justice. Also unlike Cleophus, as a close relative I know all about his life, so it won't be at all daunting to locate information to include.
