Detroit Free Press Rochelle Riley Column

Mar 29, 09:34 AM

Current Headlines: By Rochelle Riley, Detroit Free Press

Mar. 29--It's about time.

Sixty-six years after they began training at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, 62 years after becoming the best flying squadron in U.S. military history and a year after famed Star Wars filmmaker George Lucas announced plans to make a movie about them, the Tuskegee Airmen will at last be properly honored for their World War II contributions to freedom.

Today, nearly 300 surviving members of the 332nd Fighter Group will receive the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian award Congress gives.

News reports about the honor cited a 1925 Army War College study, "The Use of Negro Manpower in War," that made clear what the airmen faced -- from their own side. It called them "cowards and poor technicians and fighters, lacking initiative and resourcefulness" and part of a "subspecies of the human population."

Such racism and low expectations fueled their exploits. Air Force Lt. Col. Charles W. Dryden, 86, said it best, telling the Associated Press: "We dared not fail."

I wish I could have been there at war's end for the final tally, when the bigoted, or misguided, U.S. military learned that the Tuskegee airmen had flown 15,553 sorties and 1,578 missions over Europe and North Africa, destroying more than 400 enemy aircraft. They served mostly as escorts for bombers and never lost a plane. That level of vindication deserves an audience.

But alas, no cheering crowds greeted the airmen who returned to an America where racism was legally practiced. Some wanted to become commercial airline pilots, but could not. They had as hard a time finding jobs and homes as nonheroes did. Life hadn't changed.

The fighter group's three squadrons earned nearly 1,000 medals, including Bronze Stars and Purple Hearts, but never gold -- until now. The Gold Medal honors singular acts of exceptional service or lifetime achievement. The airmen, who were idled until First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt flew with one, deserve to be honored for both.

No pilot exemplified courage more than Lt. Col. Alex Jefferson, a retired Detroit schoolteacher who seemed as spry as a young soldier 15 months ago when he recalled his exploits for a column I did.

He had dreamed of flying since he was 4. As an airman, his P51 Mustang was shot down over southern France, and he spent nine months as a POW, drawing sketches of his imprisonment, listening to BBC updates on the war, and knitting his own socks. Still, he and other airmen returned from war not to victory parades but to life as usual.

Nearly 700 Tuskegee Airmen are gone, but the nearly 300 expected today for a ceremony in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol will be only the latest heroes to be heralded late.

No African-American soldier was awarded the Medal of Honor during World War II. In 1997, President Bill Clinton awarded Vernon Baker and seven other black WWII veterans Medals of Honor, more than half a century after they deserved them.

Every wrong isn't righted soon enough. For Alex Jefferson and the surviving airmen, it is indeed about time.

Contact Rochelle Riley at313 223 4473 or rriley99@freepress.com.

-----

To see more of the Detroit Free Press, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.freep.com.

Copyright (c) 2007, Detroit Free Press

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.