The Tuskegee Airmen — the U.S. Military’s first black pilots — have beaten the odds numerous times. In battle, they never lost a bomber they were escorting. At home, they survived overt racism from their colleagues. But their greatest obstacle was just getting the chance to prove themselves.
“In war, we needed all the talent we could get,” retired Lt. Col. Edward Drummond Jr. said.
Drummond, along with fellow retired Lt. Col. William Holloman III, is a member of the famed pilots association. Both will be speaking about their experiences at 2 p.m. Monday in the EMU Fir Room.
Associate Professor Emeritus William Lamon invited the airmen to the University. Lamon, a former pilot for the Canadian and Belgian Air Forces, and said he got the idea to bring Tuskegee Airmen to the University in 1998 after he saw a film about them. Lamon has brought Tuskegee Airmen to the University several times since 1998.
“Every American should be aware of the plight of Afro-Americans — even today, but especially during World War II,” Lamon said. “Some people should be ashamed of how they treat their fellow countrymen.”
Lamon said for a white person to become a pilot is like climbing Spencer Butte, but for a black person to achieve that same feat is like climbing Mt. Everest.
“I’m not interested in what they did as pilots — their victories, their success — I’m interested in what they did to become a pilot,” Lamon said.
Lamon and Holloman said many young people don’t know the hardships black pilots went through to earn their wings.
“We’re gonna try to make the students aware that unlike white students in the Air Corp., we had different problems,” Holloman said.
Lamon said many white government officials believed blacks were incapable of being pilots.
After the U.S. government approved the “Tuskegee Project” to let blacks train as pilots in 1941, the first class graduated nine months later, and 450 airmen served overseas, 66 of whom died in battle.
All of the flight training was conducted at Moton Field and Tuskegee Army Air Field in Tuskegee, Ala. Recruits faced racism even during their training.
“(It) was right in the heart of segregation in the south,” Drummond said, adding that he was lucky because he didn’t have to go into town often, where racism was even worse.
While Drummond did not get any combat experience until the Korean War, Holloman saw plenty of action in Italy, where he escorted bombers and disrupted German lines of communication.
“I was happy to be … putting my life on the line in defense of my country,” Holloman said.
At the same time, the flier said he had to ignore the obstacles placed in his way.
“I realized only the strong would survive,” he said.