Thursday, Aug. 19, 1999 | 11:33 a.m.
A brief history of the Tuskegee Airmen as gathered from Tuskegee Airmen Inc. documents and wire reports:
1942: The Tuskegee Airmen are founded at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama as part of the Tuskegee Experiment to determine if blacks can be trained as fighter pilots.
First lady Eleanor Roosevelt later insists that the Tuskegee Airmen be allowed to participate in combat after visiting their training grounds and observing test flights.
1943: The Pentagon allows black Americans to serve in the Armed Forces -- though in segregated units -- in the wake of heavy Allied losses against Nazi Germany.
1945: On April 5, Tuskegee Airmen officers stationed in Seymour, Ind., are arrested for entering a "whites only" officers club. One hundred and one of them are given reprimands. Second Lt. Roger Terry is convicted of assault because he brushed against a white officer while entering the club. (In 1995, the Air Force admits that Terry and the other black officers were treated unjustly and clears their records.)
1948: The combat heroics of the Tuskegee Airmen, who never lost to enemy aircraft a bomber they escorted, is a driving force behind President Truman's order to integrate the Armed Forces.
1972: Tuskegee Airmen Inc., is established in Detroit to promote the history of the black American aviation pioneers and motivate minority youths to strive toward outstanding achievement and leadership.
1997: Robert Williams, a decorated Tuskegee Airman who spearheaded the movie project about the first all-black American air squadron, dies in Pasadena, Calif., at age 75. He spent 43 years pitching the story which became the Emmy-award winning 1995 HBO film "The Tuskegee Airmen." Also, a vindicated Roger Terry, then 76, returns to Seymour, Ind., to attend the Tuskegee Airmen national convention.
1998: Former Tuskegee Airmen Commander Benjamin O. Davis, the son of America's first black brigadier general, becomes a four-star general at age 85 -- 28 years after his retirement. Davis led the all-black 99th Pursuit Squadron after receiving his wings in March 1942. Years earlier, Tuskegee Airman Daniel "Chappie" James became the nation's first black four-star general.
The very idea of forming the Tuskegee Airmen was motivated by racism -- a test that many whites were absolutely sure would prove that blacks were not fit for combat.
About 1,000 black aviators and support personnel became known as the Tuskegee Airmen because they were segregated from the white forces and trained near the famed Tuskegee Institute in Alabama during World War II.
The Tuskegee Experiment, as it was called, was designed specifically to prove that blacks lacked the courage, resourcefulness and psychological stamina to serve in combat, especially as fighter pilots.
What it produced instead was a gallant force of 450 black pilots of P-40s, P-39s, P-47s and P-51s, who proved their critics wrong by not losing to enemy aircraft any bombers they escorted over North Africa and Europe.
The surviving members of that original group are gathering in Las Vegas this week and are expected to relive some of those days together and retell their actions to thousands who will join them.
"We were drafted and had to go into the Army anyway, so to be sent to Tuskegee was a great honor for us regardless of the reasoning behind it," said former Tuskegee Airmen engineer Edward McNeal, 71, of Las Vegas, who for many years owned the Quick Check convenience store at Martin Luther King Boulevard and Carey Avenue.
"I had loaded crop-dusters for a living before the war, so I had had some experience with aircraft."
George Sherman, a Las Vegas resident for 36 years who served in World War II as a Tuskegee Airman and retired from the Air Force as a lieutenant colonel, shares similar views.
"Despite what some people thought the purpose of the Tuskegee Airmen was supposed to be, we looked at it as an opportunity to prove ourselves, and isn't that what America is all about?" he said.
McNeal and Sherman will be among the more than 3,000 people, including active and retired senior military personnel and aviation and airline officials, at the Riviera hotel-casino Saturday through Thursday for the Tuskegee Airmen's national convention.
Sherman, 73, initially learned to fly in his native Illinois. All of the white pilots in his class got to stay on at the school as instructors. He was sent to Springfield to teach blacks how to fly planes -- the only aviation job offered to him before the war.
"I was always taught to accept a challenge and that when I have a job to do I have to do it twice as good as a white man to be respected," said Sherman, who graduated from the University of Illinois with a bachelors degree in sociology.
McNeal, who was raised in Alabama and has lived in Las Vegas 25 years, also had a long military career, ending as a sergeant. He recalled that promotions came slower to blacks and that he trained a lot of white recruits who years later outranked him.
"What people should remember most about the Tuskegee Airmen is that despite all of the odds against us we succeeded," McNeal said.
Indeed, they did. The Tuskegee Airmen flew 1,578 missions and struck fear into the hearts of the German Luftwaffe, whose pilots called them the "Schwartze Vogelmenshen" (Black Birdmen).
The Tuskegee Airmen earned 150 Distinguished Flying Crosses and other major decorations during the war in which 66 of their members were killed in action.
When the war ended, the Tuskegee Airmen and other blacks came home to open hostility and had to again endure deep-seated bigotry.
"I had a degree in accounting at Northwestern (University) but not one bank would offer me a job other than janitorial and not one commercial airline would interview me for a pilot's job," said Henry Hervey, 76, of Chicago, a former Tuskegee lieutenant colonel who is national chairman for the upcoming convention.
Undaunted, Hervey went to work in black-owned accounting firms and later, with partners, formed the Independence Bank of Chicago, the first black-owned bank since the Depression, and became its president.
Today, the Tuskegee Airmen are fighting to promote the futures of minority students who they say feel disenfranchised in the educational system and in a society that in some ways is just as racist as it was during World War II.
"If at this convention, I can help one minority student get the message to remain in school and get a good education, then I will consider it a success," Sherman said.
As part of the activities, 200 Clark County School District at-risk students will participate Saturday in a two-hour flight aboard a United Airlines passenger jetliner out of McCarran International Airport. The flight is being sponsored by United and the Organization of Black Airline Pilots, which is co-sponsoring the Tuskegee Airmen Las Vegas convention.
That same day, a charity golf tournament at Black Stallion Golf Course will help raise money for the Tuskegee Airmen Scholarship Fund, to help promising minorities from poor families continue their educations.
On Tuesday about 300 local students will attend the convention and meet military personnel, commercial aviators and astronauts -- successful minority role models.
Among them will be Air Force four-star General Lloyd "Fig" Newton, commander of Air Education and Training Command at Randolph Air Force Base in San Antonio.
"The legacy of these great African-American pilots paved the way for me to achieve my goals -- I stood on their shoulders," said Newton, who in 1974 became the first black officer to serve as a Thunderbird Aerial Demonstration Team pilot at Nellis Air Force Base.
"I first saw the Thunderbirds perform in Tennessee in 1964 and I knew then that I wanted to be in the Air Force and that I wanted to be a member of the Thunderbirds."
It took Newton three tries before his persistence paid off and he became a member of the elite team that at the time flew T-38 jets. Newton later became the third black to achieve the rank of four-star general in the Air Force.
"I wanted to come to this convention because I will reach a number of young people, especially minorities, and promote aviation and the military as potential careers. I will tell them what I accomplished and show them they can accomplish their goals as well.
"And it also gives me a chance to say thank you to the Tuskegee Airmen."
Young black officers today say they too owe a lot to the Tuskegee Airmen for opening doors that once were slammed shut to minorities.
"The greatest satisfaction is the bond we develop with those still living who struck fear in the hearts of the German Luftwaffe and respect in the minds of American bomber pilots," said Capt. Brian Parker, a Nellis Air Force Base protocol officer who is black.
"I only hope that as a present-day Air Force officer I can live up to the standards of courage and dedication the original Tuskegee Airmen set."
Also as part of the week's activities, vintage World War II aircraft -- the type flown by the Tuskegee Airmen -- will be on display at the Riviera.
Scheduled featured speakers include recently appointed Secretary of the Air Force F. Whitten Peters and the Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. Lester Lyles.
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