On a hot August night almost 22 years ago, I came face to face with history in the making, and history already made. Guion Bluford was about to become the first African-American astronaut to go into space — lofted aboard shuttle Challenger — and dozens of older African-American men attired in orange sports jackets were honored guests at that milestone launch at Kennedy Space Center. I was assigned to do a story on those men, Bluford’s trailblazers: The Tuskegee Airmen.
That I had reached adulthood without knowing about the Airmen before that momentous occasion does not speak well for my schooling, my curiosity or my culture. But the gentlemen were, on that night and in every encounter I have had with them since, patient teachers and generous sharers of their experience and wisdom. Several would become transforming figures in my unofficial education and my life.
Last week, I couldn’t help but think of those men and their pioneering spirits, the very buoyant and transcendent wind beneath Bluford’s shuttle wings. On Page A3 in the Aug. 22 edition of The Courier-Journal were two color pictures of men in orange sports jackets and the headline: “Tuskegee airmen fly one last time/ Florida convention famous group’s last.”
A bit of the accompanying story, about a living history that is vanishing, by Washington Post reporter Avis Thomas-Lester:
“The Tuskegee Airmen pride themselves on never having lost a bomber they escorted in World War II, though they did lose several of their members.
“But the black aviators and support personnel, who overcame prejudice at home and German fighters abroad, are succumbing to old age and illness, with more than 50 members dying in the past year. Fewer than 200 of the 992 aviators remain.
“So it was that the group declared that last week’s annual convention will be its last. It will join with another, younger group of black pilots for future gatherings.”
It is true that surviving Airmen are the human relics of a past that did not recognize or respect their humanity with equal rights and opportunities. Nor did that past honor their contributions to victory with lasting, widespread tributes.
Though the Airmen’s story has been told to bigger audiences in the years since I first met them, it still seems like pretty weak tea just to say that they trained to be pilots and support personnel for World War II.
In truth and in fact, they did much more than that, dearly loving a country that didn’t dearly love them, loving it so much that they would die for a chance to prove it.
The Airmen’s segregated instruction started in 1941, a time when many folks thought blacks couldn’t or shouldn’t fly planes, not even in service to their country. And their war preparation was conducted at what was then Tuskegee Institute (now University) in Alabama, just a handful of miles from what had been the cradle of the Confederacy. Booker T. Washington had outlasted Jefferson Davis, praise be.
It’s one thing to know those facts. It’s quite another thing to hear an Airman tell you what those facts meant.
“We had to fight for the right to fight for our country.”
Bill Phears first said that to me on that August night in 1983.
There was no bitterness in the Airman’s voice, just the plain tone of a hard truth. Oddly, his words did not detract from the celebratory mood surrounding Guion Bluford’s historic flight. Instead, Phears’ message served to underscore that shared triumph: The orange of the Airmen’s jackets was not so different than the orange of the space/flight suit Bluford would wear as a four-time astronaut.
I never forgot what Bill Phears said, nor did I forget him. He became sort of a touchstone for me. I would call him for interviews through the years, and I would do a piece on him when he wrote a book titled, It’s Up to Us: A Recipe for Leveling the Playing Field. Not surprisingly, for this is routinely the case for Airmen, he was all about giving back: The book was about how to build community and to create opportunities for all God’s children. He died two years ago.
On that August night when Guion Bluford proved the sky was no longer the limit for people of color, I also met “Chief” Alfred Anderson, the legendary flight instructor for the Tuskegee program. A year or so later, I’d visit him in his home in Alabama, for another interview about the Airmen, and he would tell me many stories, including this one:
Eleanor Roosevelt visited the airfield of the Tuskegee Flight Training Experiment on a day in 1941, and climbed into the back of Anderson’s plane. Her handlers were not amused, and even called the president. She was not swayed or fazed, and neither was her husband. Anderson piloted the First Lady in the skies above Alabama and also returned her, safely, to Earth. Case closed. The chief died nine years ago.
Last week, a reader told me that the big picture The Courier printed with the Aug. 22 story was of a man who once lived in Louisville. Airman Yenwith Whitney, now 80 and residing in Sarasota, Fla., lived here from 1988 to 1996, when he worked for Presbyterian Church (USA) as a liaison for the group’s mission presence in Africa.
I called Whitney and we talked about what the Airmen were up against as they fought for the right to fight for their country — the “induced stupidity,” in Whitney’s words, of created myths blacks had to encounter and overcome — and the closed doors that met them when they returned.
“After the war, we were still black,” he said. “Any glory we gained in combat wasn’t known.”
So the combat pilot — he flew 34 missions as an escort for heavy bombers in World War II — became an aeronautical engineer before going to teach in Africa, and going to work for the Presbyterian Church.
As a group, Whitney said, the Airmen have worked to teach young blacks that they can succeed if they buckle down, stay disciplined in their activities and do well in school. He said the main difference between then and now is, “If you’re good, you can make it.”
A little inspiration helps.
In Bill Phears’ book, he quotes Winston Scott, an African-American astronaut, as saying, “You can’t pursue something if you don’t know about it.”
And I think that speaks to an important part of the work that people in the news media do.
Often I am asked why newspapers write about certain people and subjects, or include stories whose widespread appeal might seem elusive.
The answer was revealed to me one August night almost 22 years ago by a bunch of older fellows in orange sports jackets who were supposed to be a footnote to a bigger news story:
We as a people are so much more than one prevailing narrative. We as individuals are capable of so much. And lives can turn on a picture seen or a story read or a person profiled.
I am hoping that someone saw the picture of Yenwith Whitney in the Aug. 22 Courier-Journal, and was moved to learn more about the brave men who defied the gravitational pulls of Earth and prejudice to soar and to succeed.
I can speak to the power of that story.
Today, almost 22 years after that hot August night when I met history coming and going, a photograph of Eleanor Roosevelt sitting behind Chief Anderson at the controls of a plane hangs in my office.
It is a quiet, daily reminder that revolutionaries can be found in a hat and pearls, like Mrs. Roosevelt, or sitting calmly at the stick of a plane that he wasn’t supposed to be able to fly, like Chief Anderson, and that such people ride unseen currents that lift us all, now and forever.
