Southern Museum of Flight’s Tuskegee Airmen exhibit

You’ve seen and heard many stories about the Tuskegee Airmen. But have you ever heard about the event that may have given those heroic black aviators the only chance they needed to prove they could fly with the best of the best?

It was early 1941, well before Pearl Harbor, when a black man took a white lady for a little plane ride. He wasn’t just any black man… and she wasn’t just any white lady.

You know them now as the Tuskegee Airmen, but they were designated the 99th Pursuit Squadron.

He came to be known simply as “Chief.” Charles Alfred “Chief” Anderson taught himself to fly, then taught hundreds of other black men to fly, taught them to become America’s first black fighter pilots.

He was at an airfield in Tuskegee the day Eleanor Roosevelt stopped by during a visit to Tuskegee. We don’t know for sure if she asked for Chief to take her for a plane ride or if Chief invited her, but off they went.

“Eleanor Roosevelt played such an important role in the Tuskegee Airmen story,” said Dr. Jim Griffin of the Southern Museum of Flight. “She basically had an opportunity to fly with Chief Alfred Anderson back in the early 1940’s down in the Tuskegee area….and that was at a time when black men just didn’t fly with any women… especially the President’s wife… and when that opportunity came up and she took that flight for 40 minutes and then had an opportunity to twist her husband’s arm and convince him that the Tuskegee Airmen needed to be given a chance, that was such an important part of history and really made the difference in the Tuskegee Airmen story.“ 

The story is told and the pictures document that Mrs. Roosevelt was smiling when she took off…and smiling when she came back down. It was a short flight, but such a critical part of the story. It provided the shot in the arm and got the attention of the President of the United States.

“It’s a story of men who went to war who went to war to fight as pilots when they were told that they were not good enough, that they did not have the skills to fly the fighters,” Griffin said. “It’s also a great civil rights story about men who overcame such incredible odds to be able to be a part of the Armed Forces of the United States and to fight for our country.“

Mike Royer visited with Dr. Griffin and Mrs. Ruby Dilworth Archie at the Southern Museum of Flight. The Tuskegee display there is filled with planes, documentation and video presentations of the 99th Pursuit Squadron and what all they overcame to record their own history of flying and wartime aviation. 

A retired teacher, Archie teaches young people both black and white about Tuskegee and the huge leap those young men took on the way to breaking integration barriers in our military.  Jim Griffin is an aviator… he understands the love for flying.

“Well, I can imagine being frustrated by never having the opportunity, by never even being able to apply for something… being a part of something, and wanting to fly is a very special kind of desire.  When you want to fly, sometimes it’s more powerful than anything else, and I can imagine a young man being in that situation and being told no.“

You ought to see, and take your time to see, the Tuskegee exhibit at the Southern Museum of Flight. They’re open every day but Monday.

We’ve lost many of the men of Tuskegee in recent years, but we will do well to remember them all and what they did… because they too wanted to fight for the country they loved.