With the afternoon sun shining directly onto the airplane, Robert Johnson of Columbus lifted his 1-year-old son Sirius so that the little boy was eye level with the front propeller of the P-51 Mustang at Columbus Air Force Base Wednesday.
“They have big propellers,” said Sirius’ 5-year-old brother Cinco, and he and several other children ran around the plane to look at it from different angles.
The P-51s were the aircraft flown by the Tuskegee Airmen, the U.S. military’s first Black pilots, when they were escorting bombers in Europe during World War II. Now restored, the airplane is one of more than 100 historic aircraft that tours the country with the Commemorative Air Force (CAF), an organization that restores and flies World War II-era planes to teach the public, mainly school-age children, about historic aircraft and the pilots who flew them.
The Johnsons were one of several families, most of them affiliated with the base, who looked at that airplane, along with a T-6 — also flown by the Tuskegee Airmen — a restored T-38 and an F-16 on display at the base as part of the Commemorative Air Force Traveling Tuskegee Airmen Museum. Base personnel organized for the planes and traveling museum to visit CAFB in honor of Black History Month and coinciding with the opening of a new flight room on base named in honor of the Tuskegee Airmen’s commander, Gen. Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. The P-51 is painted in the likeness of Davis’ warbird.
Capt. Nichole Evans, an instructor pilot at the base and one of those who helped arrange for the planes and exhibit to come, said she wanted to help tell the story of the Tuskegee pilots, whose contributions to the military during World War II were largely forgotten in the years after the war, when the United States was still racially segregated. Evans said it’s important to her, as a member of a minority community, to make sure kids know the Tuskegee Airmen are now a celebrated part of the military’s history.
“Their contribution to our Air Force is just as celebrated to all of us in the Air Force,” she said. “… I want (their story) to be more common knowledge, that (kids) know that we know how important they are to our history.”
After looking at the airplanes, the kids and their families saw a 30-minute video called “Rise Above” that told the story of the airmen — how Black units in the military were segregated from white forces and relegated to support roles rather than combat. The U.S. Army Air Corps opened a training base in Tuskegee, Alabama, for Black pilots in 1942. The pilots at Tuskegee became expertly trained to escort and defend bombers in North Africa and Europe. They saw combat in the bombing of Berlin that ended the European theater in 1945, and were eventually awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in 2007 and invited to the inauguration of President Barack Obama in 2009.
While normally the CAF’s traveling museum would go to area schools, most of the organization’s tours were put on hold last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, said Terry and Jeanette Hollis, a married couple from Columbus who have been with CAF for 10 years and hosted the Tuskegee and other traveling exhibits. Jeanette said the organization “keep(s) the history alive” and encourages students to focus on their education to achieve their goals.
“We want to use (the Tuskegee Airmen) as an example (for kids) to know they can do anything they want to if they put the effort into it,” Terry said. “These guys had so much to overcome because they had so many obstacles. They were not supposed to succeed.”
The exhibit and planes will be on display at the base through Friday. Since the exhibit can’t go to schools, Evans said the base invited school groups, and particularly Reserve Officer Training Corps students from Columbus High School, Mississippi State University and other area schools and organizations to see the airplanes and exhibits.
“I like the message that the museum has about rising above your adversity, your challenges, to achieve your dreams,” Evans said. “That’s kind of what we all did. Everybody’s got stories.”
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 46 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.