State program honors local Tuskegee Airmen

 

 

By Felix Hoover

For Your News Columbus

Aug. 9. 2010

 

Five original members of the famed Tuskegee Airmen recently captured the spotlight at a midday program at the Ohio Department of Transportation.

 

The program, presented by the Ohio Department of Public Safety Military and Cultural Competence committees, included a video about the Airmen and how they fought on behalf of the United States and its allies while also combating racism at home and abroad.

 

In recent years the Airmen, who began as members of the U.S. Army Air Corps, have received some of the recognition they earned decades ago. In 2007, they were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.

 

“Because of what they did in the 40s, I was able to do what I did in the 50s,” said Ed Morast, president of the Ohio Memorial Chapter

 

The five original Tuskegee Airmen in attendance were Alex Boudreaux, Hilton Carter, Charles Feaster, Paul Menefield, and Robert L. Peeples, all from central Ohio.

 

Just getting into the training program, which began in 1941, came with racial obstacles based on ill-founded assertions that blacks were incapable of operating aircraft and were unable or unwilling to serve in combat. Such assumptions, which bolstered attitudes of white superiority and fostered a system of racial segregation, overlooked the reality that blacks had served with distinction in all of the nation’s wars, mostly in segregated units, before World War II.

 

Columbus plays a special role in the history of the Airmen because after the government disbanded its fighter units in 1946 and closed the Tuskegee base in Alabama, Lockbourne Air Base was their home base for three years. Lockbourne is now Rickenbacker International Airport.

 

President Harry S Truman ordered the desegregation of all military forces in 1948 in part because of the stellar performance of the Tuskegee Airmen and other black units in WWII.

 

During the ceremony at the Transportation headquarters, the audience was invited to join the Ohio Memorial Chapter of the Tuskegee Airmen Inc., which promotes scholarships in science and aviation for minority students.