Local Tuskegee Airmen gave wings to Obama's triumph

WASHINGTON

During the 2008 presidential campaign, an oft-repeated adage about Barack Obama's groundbreaking role in black history spread among his supporters: "Rosa sat so Martin could walk; Martin walked so Obama could run; Obama is running so our children can fly."

Before those trailblazers made their marks, however, another group of African American pioneers helped clear their path by breaking a barrier in the periwinkle sky.

They are the Tuskegee Airmen, a group of pilots and aviation specialists who helped secure victory for the Allies in World War II and changed perceptions about blacks along the way.

Today, hundreds of the surviving airmen, including several from Hampton Roads, will have prime seats for Obama's swearing-in ceremony.

"We truly believe we are steppingstones," said Hampton resident Grant S. Williams Sr., 88, an original Tuskegee Airman.

Williams is one of six men from the Tidewater Airmen chapter who made the trip to Washington as invited guests.

"We came during a time when everybody, or America, said we were nothing. We came through a troublesome world, we fought a battle that they said we weren't capable of fighting," he recalled during a recent interview.

Though Williams knows Obama's election isn't a panacea for America's continuing racial struggles, he said it is a sign of progress.

"No longer do we question whether we can accomplish a mission," said Williams, a retired Air Force chief master sergeant. "We now can join the crowd that says, 'Yes, we can.' "

From 1941 to 1946, nearly 950 pilots graduated from Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama, the proving ground for many of the original airmen in the then-segregated military. It wasn't until 1948 that President Harry S. Truman ordered an end to segregation in the armed forces.

One of those pilots was Emmett Taylor Hayes of Hampton, a Tidewater airman who also traveled to the nation's capital for Obama's inauguration today.

Over the course of a 31-year military career, Hayes, now 84, flew missions during World War II and served during the Korean and Vietnam wars.

The segregation he experienced in the 1940s during his time at Tuskegee was somewhat foreign to Hayes, a Pennsylvania native.

"It was generally thought that a black person didn't have the mental or physical dexterity to fly airplanes," he said. "We had to overcome that stigma.... That wasn't an acceptable option - failure."

Just getting trained in those days was a challenge - there were efforts within the military to ground the Tuskegee Airmen and disband the program before it took flight.

"The whole thing was set up for failure," said James City County resident Harry Quinton, 83, an original Tuskegee Airman. "It was never supposed to succeed. I mean, the idea of training blacks to fly airplanes was just so preposterous."

When they got airborne, the black pilots proved their critics wrong, regularly flying successful missions as escorts for bombers.

To distinguish themselves, Tuskegee pilots painted the tails of their fighter planes red, earning them the monikers "Redtails" and "Redtail Angels" from American troops.

"The Germans called us 'black birdmen,' " Williams remembered.

Their accomplishments were later recognized with scores of combat medals; most recently members of the original airmen corps were presented the Congressional Gold Medal in 2007, one of America's highest civilian awards.

In addition to the pilots, thousands of other original Tuskegee Airmen were trained as mechanics, navigators and other aviation support specialists at various military installations.

Quinton, who was trained as an airplane mechanic, spent time at bases in Mississippi, Georgia and Kentucky, but not Tuskegee.

"I never realized at the time, 60 years ago, that we would be honored to the extent that we are and given so much credit for doing what we did," Quinton said.

Julian Walker, (804) 697-1564, julian.walker@pilotonline.com