Tuskegee Airmen

Tens of thousands of Americans flew aircraft in World War II. These brave young men risked their lives by serving their country. And they were greatly admired for their courage and their piloting skills. But many white Americans did not want blacks to become pilots. Rumors claimed that blacks were less capable of learning how to fly than whites. A group of servicemen would crush those racist rumors. A project created by the United States Army Air Corps in 1941 at Alabama's Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) trained nearly a thousand African Americans to become fighter pilots, and many more to be ground crewmen servicing the planes the pilots flew. Called the Tuskegee Airmen, the all-black group was credited with 15,500 sorties (individual missions) during the war.