Tuskegee Airmen Role Models for Current Leaders

The famed Tuskegee Airmen are once again making history. On March 29, 300 members of the all black flying squadron will receive the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor. Akin to the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Gold Medal is the highest civilian award bestowed by Congress. The all black squadron was formed in 1941 and, before the end of World War II, had flown more than 15,000 sorties and destroyed more than 400 enemy aircraft. The squadron was known as the Tuskegee Airmen because they trained at the renowned Tuskegee Institute, an all black college founded by Booker T. Washington in Alabama.

In receiving the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor, airmen such as Lt. Colonel Charles Dryden will join the ranks of fellow recipients Colin Powell, Winston Churchill, The Wright Brothers, Rosa Parks and George Washington. The honor accorded them for lifetime achievement and singular acts of exceptional service is especially appropriate given the immense obstacles they overcame. In 1941, the Army Air Corps was still deeply segregated and black soldiers endured blatant racism and derision. As a child of the south, I vividly remember the difficulties blacks faced in Alabama before the civil rights movement.

A study conducted by the Army War College in 1925 had opined that “black men were cowards and poor technicians and fighters, lacking initiative and resourcefulness.” It further denigrated them as a “subspecies of the human population.” The Tuskegee Airmen, however, collectively proved their courage, ability and loyalty in the air. I am proud to say that the Tuskegee Airmen were one of the most successful and decorated flying units of the war.

We must remember that the Tuskegee Airmen graduated from segregated black high schools and even endured discrimination in the army despite being officers. Col. Dryden recalls visiting a prisoner of war camp in South Carolina where “we saw German POWs do things on that base we couldn’t do.” Despite their heroic sacrifices, the Tuskegee Airmen could not sit in the front of a train or a first class car for nearly two decades.

65 years later, many of the obstacles that stood in the way of the Tuskegee Airmen have been removed. However, today we are inundated with stories about achievement gaps, low test scores among black males and increasing dropout rates. Where has the spirit of Tuskegee gone? We cannot blame all of the recent failures on the fact that our schools are segregated and poor; the schools the Tuskegee Airmen went to were much poorer. We have excelled before and we can do so again.

Men like Pastor Bill Winston of River Forest, also a former fighter pilot, overcame the same obstacles that we now believe insurmountable. Today Pastor Winston owns a 33 acre shopping mall on Roosevelt and flies his own jet around the country. The Tuskegee Airmen and their successors should remind us that we are capable of greatness even in the midst of trying circumstances.

If we want the younger generations to surpass the accomplishments of the Tuskegee Airmen, we need to get serious about demanding progress in Chicago Public Schools. Instead of deceiving ourselves by calling little efforts big efforts and heralding every tiny improvement, we ought to demand much more out of our school system. Where is the outrage in the black community over our schools’ miserable performance? If the Hispanic community can harness the power of the local school council to oust a black principal, why can’t the black community exercise the same power and take control of black schools? It seems we are more concerned with the loss of one excellent principal in a Hispanic school than we are about the failing bureaucracies in our own schools. Although the current system definitely needs reform at the state level to give parents greater control over their children’s education, we are not even taking advantage of the power we have under the current system.

The example of the Tuskegee Airmen should encourage us to make the most of our opportunities and to not accept failure as an option. Lt. Colonel Charles Dryden, now 86 years old, reminisced about his time in flight training, saying, “we dared not fail.” His is an attitude we could certainly use more of today. Our schools may not have as much money as we would like, they may be segregated and they may not offer our students all the advantages others enjoy, but when it comes to our children we dare not fail. I applaud the Tuskegee Airmen both for their service to the country in World War II and for their shining example of achievement in the face of adversity.