Sen Rockefeller honors Tuskegee Airmen at WVSU’s commencement

[Rose Siding]

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (left), D-W.Va., hugs former Army Staff Sgt. Benjamin Perkins at West Virginia State University’s graduation ceremony Sunday. Perkins and other West Virginia members of the Tuskegee Airmen were honored at the ceremony.


Area man recalls service with Tuskegee Airmen

It has been 60 years since Benjamin Clyde Perkins talked much about his past. He is one of the original Tuskegee Airmen — the legendary World War II fighters who were the first blacks allowed to fly planes for the U.S. military.

“This is the first time anyone’s ever asked me about it,” he said simply, in a Sunday Gazette-Mail interview last week at his house in Institute.
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Perkins’ house is a couple of streets over from West Virginia State University, the once-segregated college Perkins attended before he was “shipped off to Tuskegee,” as he puts it. Perkins will be honored today with a U.S. Senate Resolution presented by Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., at WVSU’s commencement, along with three other Tuskegee Airmen with WVSU ties.
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Perkins...took the military entrance exam after some of his co-workers bet him he couldn’t pass it.

“I passed it, like an idiot,” he laughed. “Next thing I knew, I’m on a train going to Patterson Field, Ohio.”

http://wvgazette.com/section//2005052137

[Spazito]

1. Until I watched the movie on the Tuskegee airmen

I had no idea about them, it was very educational. To learn:

"The Tuskegee Airmen never lost a single bomber they escorted to enemy fighters. No other fighter unit with as many missions could make the same claim."

was one of the many things covered in the movie that stood out for me. The whole history of the Tuskegee 'experiment' is fascinating and, imo, not publicized enough, imo.

[JohnyCanuck]

2. 2nd Class Angels.

Red Tail Angels

Still, “we were very successful in escorting bombers,” Perkins said. That’s an understatement. The planes Perkins supervised for the 99th had become known as “Red Tails” (their tails were painted red) and the weary bombers called their pilots the “Red Tail Angels.” They knew that when the Red Tails showed up, they would make it home alive.

It was true: The Tuskegee Airmen never lost a single bomber they escorted to enemy fighters. No other fighter unit with as many missions could make the same claim.

Maj. Spanky Roberts became commander of the 99th. (He later became a colonel, and died in 1984.) By the end of the war, more than 15,000 black men and women were part of the black flying corps. The pilots earned 150 Distinguished Flying Crosses, 744 Air Medals, eight Purple Hearts and 14 Bronze Stars. Sixty-six lost their lives, and 32 became prisoners of war.

Angels or not, once the war was over I'm sure it would have been routinely expected in certain states that they should return to sitting in the designated seats at the back of the bus and drinking only from the "colored" water fountains without protest, like all good colored folk who knew their place were expected to do. Thank the goddes there has been major progress since those days at any rate.

I truly do admire these men not just for their courage under fire, but for their role in demonstrating to their fellow citizens the manifest unfairness and stupidity of the laws enforcing discrimination and segregation of the races that existed at the time.