It was in 1939, when the US government began establishing flight schools at colleges around the nation but refused to do so at any of the Black colleges believing black men didn’t have the caliber to be fighter pilots, much to the chagrin of the black community since the government seems to be curtailing the rights of the young black men who would want to aspire as fighter pilots to serve and defend their country.
But with mounting pressure from black newspapers, pressure groups and a few sympathetic government leaders including President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor it was decided to try the “Tuskegee Experiment”. So on July the 19th 1941 a flight school was established at the historic Tuskegee University in Alabama.
June 1943, was the month and year that the Tuskegee Airmen were assigned to combat over North Africa. The airmen showed courage, skill and dedication in air combat that they were able to dominate their assigned air space over the allegedly superior Luftwaffe Airmen . They flew more than 15,000 sorties, and over 1,500 missions during the war, and they they never lost an escorted bomber to enemy fighters. No other escort unit could claim such a record.