Tuskegee Airmen

     The Tuskegee Airmen were the first black military aviators in the U.S. Army Air Corps (AAC), a precursor of the U.S. Air Force. Trained at the Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama, they flew more than 15,000 individual sorties in Europe and North Africa during World War II. Their impressive performance earned them more than 150 Distinguished Flying Crosses, and helped encourage the eventual integration of the U.S. armed forces.

    The program’s trainees, nearly all of them college graduates or undergraduates, came from all over the country. In addition to some 1,000 pilots, the Tuskegee program trained nearly 14,000 navigators, bombardiers, instructors, aircraft and engine mechanics, control tower operators and other maintenance and support staff.

    With pioneers like Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh breaking ground, many young Africa Americans aspired to be pilots; however, experienced several obstacles. With the belief that black soldiers being inferior to white soldiers, soldiers struggled to gain  positions as Roosevelt expanded the civilian pilot training, in responds to the ongoing war in Europe.

    Black newspapers like the Chicago Defender and Pittsburgh Courier joined civil rights groups like the NAACP in arguing that black Americans be included, leading to the Tuskegee Experiment. Roosevelt and the Department of War chose to place the trainees in Jim Crows’ Alabama, near the prestigious Tuskegee University.

    By their last combat mission on April 26, 1945, two weeks before the German surrender, the Tuskegee Airmen had  destroyed and damaged 36 German planes in the air and 237 on the ground, as well as nearly 1,000 rail cars and transport vehicles and a German destroyer.

    Even after their brave service, the Tuskegee Airmen returned home to a country where they continued to face systematic racism and prejudice.

    But they did represent an important step forward in preparing the nation for the racial integration of the military, which began with President Harry Truman who issued Executive Order 9981 desegregating the U.S. Armed Forces and mandating equality of opportunity and treatment on July 26, 1948.