Nov. 3, 2009 09:53 AM
The Arizona Republic

Tuskegee Airmen, Women Airforce Service Pilots and fighter aces who shot down several enemy aircraft during aerial combat, will be among 40 military aviators who gather Saturday at the Commemorative Air Force Arizona Wing Museum in Mesa to share their wartime experiences. "This event is planned to be the largest Veterans Day gathering of military aviators in the state," said wing spokesman, Rick Senffner. Read More

TUSKEGEE, AL (WSFA) - Former chicago educator Arne Duncan, now education secretary in President Obama's cabine has come up with a novel idea for a tour to promote the value of staying in school and getting a good education.

BILOXI, Miss. -- Former Tuskegee Airman Robert Decatur, who became a judge and civil rights lawyer, will be buried in Biloxi this week.

Decatur died at his home in Titusville, Fla., on Aug. 19 at age 88. Burial is at Biloxi National Cemetery with full military honors at 11 a.m. Thursday.

He graduated from St. Leo High School in Chicago and received his pilot's license from the University of Akron in Ohio. He earned a law degree from Case Western Reserve University in Ohio.

June 2, 1943 - Aliceville's World War II prisoner-of-war camp receives its first contingent of captured German soldiers. By the end of the week, Aliceville housed 3,000 prisoners. Nearly 5,000 POWs eventually would be imprisoned in the facility, the largest of four such camps in Alabama.

Other Events this Week

The Scottsboro Boys, eight young men ranging in age from 13 to 21, are sentenced to die for the alleged rape of two white women on a freight train between Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Scottsboro, Alabama. The conviction by an all-white jury and the subsequent appeals were widely publicized and led to major protests around the world. Four of the men were freed in 1937, while the others endured lengthy prison sentences. The final prisoner was released in 1950.

Despite limited opportunities early on, African-Americans have played a pivotal role in United States aviation and military history. From the American Revolution and the Civil War to the astronauts of today, African-Americans have not let circumstances hold them back.

One of the most highly touted of these success stories is the triumph of the Tuskegee Airmen. Prior to 1940, African-Americans were thought to lack the ability to master the training and leadership skills required to succeed in combat. More

by Senior Airman Thomas Trower
332nd Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs

10/1/2008 - JOINT BASE BALAD, Iraq -- The 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing's lineage not only holds a link between the past and present of the Air Force, it also connects two generations of one Tuskegee Airman family here.

SAVANNAH, GA (WTOC) - A local man who helped write a major chapter in American military history, Tuskegee Airman James E. Wright, died this morning at Memorial University Medical Center. He was 92.

Wright was part of a "military experiment" in Tuskegee, Alabama during World War II, to train America's first African-American military pilots. In time the "experiment" became known as the Tuskegee Experience and the participants as the Tuskegee Airmen. more

More than 60 years ago, when it was thought by many that African-Americans were incapable of piloting airplanes, Vernon Kingsley Sport knew he could.

Mr. Sport enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps after graduating from high school and volunteered repeatedly to fly with the pioneering black aviators who became known as the Tuskegee Airmen. He was turned down several times because he didn’t have a college degree, said his son-in-law Dr. Alfred Wyatt Jr., a Fayetteville dentist.