In recognition of Black History Month, North Penn High School and Pennbrook Middle School welcomed Tuskegee Airman Eugene Richardson Jr., who spoke to students about the history of black pilots on Tuesday. The Tuskegee Airmen were the first black military airmen, who enlisted in 1941 and trained at Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama, Richardson said. There were 450 Tuskegee Airmen who served during World War II, and despite their outstanding combat record, they “faced fierce discrimination during and after the war,” he said.
Richardson, 88, began his presentation at Pennbrook with the story of Eugene Bullard, a black man from Georgia whose grandfather was lynched. “His father told him that across the ocean in France, black people were treated the same as white people,” Richardson said. Bullard sneaked onto a German ship and made it to France, where he entered the air force and served in World War I.
Another early black pilot was Charles Alfred Anderson, who grew up in Bryn Mawr. Anderson wanted to learn how to fly planes, Richardson said, but no one would teach him; he ended up teaching himself how to fly.
Anderson eventually ended up at Tuskegee, one of six training programs for blacks who wanted to fly, Richardson said. In the 1930s, the American government began setting up civilian flight training at colleges across the country, he explained, though they were only open to whites. “A campaign was started to get the same opportunities for black men,” Richardson said. The junior senator who ended up supporting that campaign was none other than Harry S. Truman, who would later desegregate the military as president in 1948.
While he was at Tuskegee, Anderson had the honor of flying a plane with a very special passenger: First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Roosevelt was visiting Tuskegee and when she saw that blacks could actually fly planes, she insisted on flying with one of them, Richardson said.
Tuskegee started training pilots in July 1941. It was unsuccessful at first; only five of the 13 pilots who started the 40-week course graduated, Richardson said. Eventually, though, 26 black pilots were certified and became known as Squadron 99 in the summer of 1942, nine months after the country had declared war. The black pilots were anxious to go to combat and achieve freedom for Europeans, he said, despite the fact that they didn’t have their own freedoms at the time.
Although the rest of the military was hesitant about black pilots at first, they proved multiple times that they were just as good as — if not better than — the white pilots, Richardson said. When the Allies were invading Italy, it was up to the Tuskegee Airmen to keep the Germans away. “They shot down 17 German planes in one week,” he said.
Later, when many white pilots flying bombers were shot down, the Tuskegee Airmen were asked to fly alongside the bombers and protect them, Richardson said. They flew planes with red noses and tails, earning them the nickname of the “Red-Tail Angels.”
Things have changed dramatically in the military since that time, Richardson said; today’s military includes all races and sexes. “That’s why we’ve got the most powerful military on earth,” he said. “This shows us that the color of a person’s skin doesn’t show us what they’re like inside.”