In 1940 a "White's Only" sign not only kept Blacks out of rest rooms and restaurants it also
applied to cockpits of America's military aircraft. But under intense social and political pressure the Army established experimental aviation training units for Blacks at Tuskegee, Alabama. The Army wanted to put to rest at last the question of Blacks' ability to operate sophisticated equipment, fight courageously in battle, or assume positions of authority. The goal of these aviators then was to prove that black men could fly and fight as well as any other American. But their first battle was to fight for the most basic human rights of dignity and respect. As the leader of the Tuskegee Airmen, Col. Benjamin O Davis, Jr. said " With the enemy I knew that I only had to die once. In the Army Air Corps and in life I had to live with the day to day suffering of degradation and racism."

Nearly 1000 Black pilots received segregated training at Tuskegee, Alabama while over 10,000 Black maintenance personnel trained under similar conditions at Chanute field in Illinois. Over 550 trained as bomber pilots but the war ended before they were deployed overseas. The remaining 445 fighter pilots and their crews operated as segregated combat units in Europe, the Mediterranean and North Africa flying in raids such as Anzio Beach and the Ploesti Oilfields. With their aircraft tails painted bright red to identify themselves the “Red Tails” carried the hopes and dreams of their thirteen million African American countrymen into battle...