Tuskegee aviators are best known for proving during World War II that black men can be elite fighter pilots. Less well known is the instrumental role these pilots, navigators and bombers played during the war in the fight against segregation through nonviolent direct action. Their tactics would become the cornerstone of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
The most influential moment in the collective civil disobedience of the Tuskegee airmen came in the spring of 1945, in what became known as the Open Field Mutiny. After enduring years of inadequate training facilities, discriminatory policies, and hostile Air Force commanders, 101 All-Black 477 officerse Bombardment Group – which initially trained at Tuskegee Army Airfield in Alabama – was arrested at Freeman Field in Indiana after refusing to sign a basic rule requiring officers’ clubs separate for black and white soldiers. The order came after 61 black officers were arrested trying to enter the White Officer Club.
They weren’t alone. After the War Department ordered military bases to integrate all recreational facilities in 1944, black officers across the country were eager to test the new policy. Most cases, including a previous incident with the 447e“Involved black servicemen ‘entering into post exchanges and asking to be served, or entering the theater and sitting in the white section,” said Alan M. Osur, former Air History professor Force Academy and author of Blacks in the Army Air Force during World War II: The Problems of Race Relations. Nothing had yet happened on the scale of the Freeman Field Mutiny.
Separate, but not equal facilities
Their actions grew out of a long debate over the unequal treatment of black and white officers and the integration of officers’ clubs. “The country is not ready to accept white officers and officers of color at the same social level,” said Major General Frank Hunter, commanding general of the 477.e Bombardment group. “I base this opinion on the history of this country over the past 125 years.”
A Tuskegee Airman from the 477th Bombardment Group inspects the engine of an E-25 aircraft, at Fort Knox’s Godman Field in Louisville, Kentucky, c. 1944.
African American Newspapers / Gado / Getty Images
At Freeman Field, Hunter’s subordinate, Col. Robert Selway, established two allegedly equal officer clubs – one for white officers, who were designated as instructors and one for black officers, who were classified as interns. But the two clubs were anything but equal. The White Officers’ Club had a large fireplace and game room with pool tables, ping-pong, and card tables, while its black counterpart was heated by charcoal stoves and contained none of the amenities. mentioned above. Black officers nicknamed their officers’ club “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and refused to attend, according to Todd Moye, author of Freedom Flyers: The Tuskegee Airmen of World War II and the director of the Tuskegee Airmen Oral History Project of the National Park Service. “Selway attributed his decision to the belief that fraternization between instructors and trainees would have a detrimental effect on the formation of the group,” Moye said. “In truth, the effort was a transparent attempt to circumvent both the letter and the law … which prohibited the segregation of grassroots facilities by race.”
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“You can’t come in here.
On April 5, 1945, the black officers of the 477th began an orchestrated attempt over two days to integrate the club of white officers at Freeman Field. The officers were led by Lieutenant Coleman A. Young, a bomber and navigator and former United Auto Workers organizer in Detroit, who had successfully helped integrate the officers’ club at Midland, Texas Army Air Field the previous year. In a strategy session a few days before the start of the Freeman Field sit-ins, Young and a group of black officers decided to resort to nonviolent action and join the White Officer Club in small groups so that it doesn’t seem coordinated. “They were prepared for our arrival, expecting problems. The deputies were there to prevent us from entering the club the night we arrived, ”said Young, who later became Detroit’s first black mayor. “We were going to disperse, play pool, have a drink, buy cigarettes. The white captain says, “You can’t come in here.” We just brushed against it and dispersed. The commander was furious and put us under arrest, on watch.
Lieutenant Coleman A Young, c. 1944
African American Newspapers / Gado / Getty Images
Young, who recounted the episode in an interview with oral historian Studs Terkel, went on to say that it was his responsibility to convince others to pursue the plan. “After the first nine, it was difficult to get the next nine. But we broke the ice, and two more groups came in and were placed[d] under arrest … They wanted to put us in a position of disobedience at a command post.
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Basic Regulation 85-2
With the exception of three officers accused of “pushing” a white commander at the officers’ club, Young and 57 other arrested officers were released to their quarters on April 9, four days after the sit-ins began. But Hunter and Selway doubled down on their racist policies by issuing Basic Rule 85-2 to strengthen and clarify their position on the issue, according to Lawrence P. Scott and William M. Womack, authors of Double V: The struggle for the civil rights of the airmen of Tuskegee.
Base rule 85-2, which mandated the separation of officers by unit (which, in effect, meant race), was posted around the base. Selway ordered all officers, black and white, to appear individually before a board and attest that they fully understand 85-2. All 292 white officers signed the settlement, while 101 of 422 black officers refused. “Some of the trainee officers signed it as written, some signed it removing the words ‘and fully understand’, and others signed it, but wrote endorsements stating that it was racially discriminated against, ”Selway wrote in his report.
The 101 black officers who refused to sign were placed under arrest and flew secretly to Godman Army Air Field in Kentucky, where they were put on temporary duty for 90 days. The three black officers accused of “stampeding” with military police were held in Freeman for court martial. According to Moye, the black officers still in Freeman continued to try to get into the white officer club. “As the men approached the club, Col. Patterson would ask who was the spokesperson for the group, and all the members would say ‘no one’,” Moye wrote.
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A review of the death penalty
On April 25, 1945, 12 days after their arrest, the 101 black officers were released with a reprimand on their records – after pressure from the NAACP, the National Urban League, and the black press. According to Scott and Womack in their book Double v, General Hunter had wanted the men to be court martialed, but the Office of the Judge Advocate General found the administrative reprimand to be adequate punishment because “trying officers for violating the 64e The article of war could result in capital punishment, which the military could not afford politically.
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After the release of the airmen, George S. Schuyler, columnist for the African-American weekly Pittsburgh Courier, praised the decision: “It is impossible for a man to be a first class officer if he is constantly forced into a second class post,” he wrote. “It is a pleasure to see that the War Department has had the good sense to put these young men back to service.”
The three black officers accused of “pushing” into the white officers’ club have been tried. Two, Marsden Thomson and Shirley Clinton, were acquitted and fined. Roger “Bill” Terry, the third officer, was represented by future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. A graduate of the University of California at Los Angeles, Terry was court-martialed and acquitted for disobeying an officer, but found guilty of “stampeding”. Fined $ 150, he received a dishonorable dismissal in November 1945 with a reduction in rank.
READ MORE: Why Harry Truman ended segregation in the military in 1948
The Civil Rights Legacy of Tuskegee Airmen
In 1995, President Bill Clinton pardoned Terry, reinstated his rank of second lieutenant and reimbursed him $ 150. At the same time, Clinton removed General Hunter’s letters of reprimand from the permanent files of 15 of the 104 officers indicted in the protest. The Air Force also promised to remove reprimands from the other 89 officers once they were tabled.
Former Tuskegee Aviator Roger Terry, pictured at 87, c. 2009
Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Terry, who earned a law degree and worked as an investigator in the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office, was never able to fly overseas during World War II. But he witnessed how the nonviolent direct action tactics of the 477th Bombardment Group at Freeman Field influenced the civil rights movement where sit-ins at food and bus stations transformed the southern states. -United.
“We think it broke the back of the camel because they had to admit the fact that 104 officers were arrested, and they all defied this order, and the order was considered illegal,” said Terry in an interview for Tuskegee National Park. Oral history project of aviators. “We think – and I think I speak for most of the guys – that it was our advantage that we gave the black people, that there would be no more discrimination in the Air Force from leaving. of that time – at least officially. In 1948, President Harry Truman issued Executive Order 9981, ordering the desegregation of all US military forces.
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