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America’s First Black Pilots Honored This Weekend

By Emily Forrester

Published: Fri, October 10, 2008 - 11:03 pm Last Updated: Fri, October 10, 2008 - 11:05 pm

Short URL: http://wkrg.com/a/19901/

Alabama is honoring the Tuskegee airmen
this weekend.
Members of the famed World War II outfit were the nation's first
black military pilots. The fought Hitler overseas and injustice at
home.
In their honor, the air field where they trained in Tuskegee,
Alabama, has been declared a National Historic Site. Alabama's
governor, in a surprise announcement Friday, declared part of
nearby I-85 the "Tuskegee Airmen Memorial Highway."
Eighty-four-year-old John Mulzac is among the airmen who
returned for the dedication of the site and its new museum. He
says, "When I think about what we went through, this just brings
tears to my eyes."
Nearly 1,000 pilots were trained at the Tuskegee Army Air Field
under a program that began as an "experiment" to see if blacks
could pilot warplanes and handle heavy machinery. Their success in
the war helped lead to President Truman's 1948 order desegregating
the armed forces.