When Toledo Express Airport hosts the touring exhibit RISE ABOVE this week, visitors will get a chance to meet one of the few surviving black pilots who flew missions to protect American fighters during World War II.
“I will probably make appearances at the Toledo and Findlay shows for at least one day,” said Harold Brown, 91, an original Tuskegee Airman who has made his home on Catawba Island with his wife, Marsha Bordner, a retired president of Terra Community College.
RISE ABOVE tells the 70-plus-year-old story of the nation’s first black military fighter pilots. The free exhibit will be at Grand Aire hangar at Toledo Express Airport in Swanton, from Thursday through Sept. 13.
Housed in a 53-foot semi trailer with 160-degree panoramic screens, the display will help visitors feel as though they are actually in the cockpit of the Squadron’s P-51C Mustang, the signature aircraft flown by Tuskegee Airmen during the war.
“The RISE ABOVE exhibit name comes from the Tuskegee Airmen who rose above the obstacles,” said Brown, who retired from the Air Force 50 years ago. He also retired from Columbus State College in 1986 and retired again after doing consulting work. He holds master’s and doctoral degrees from Ohio State University.
Brown will visit the exhibit at Toledo Express at 9:30 a.m. Thursday.
The inspiring story of the Tuskegee Airmen dismantled the belief that African-American servicemen were inherently inferior to white pilots which, for the most part, was a widely held conclusion about black Americans at the time.
“When I was a youngster in about the sixth grade I had a love affair with airplanes. In those years, they wouldn’t allow us to wash an airplane, let alone fly one,” Brown said. In 1938 and 1939 he said efforts for the military to give aspiring black pilots the chance to fly increased.
Racism drove military authorities to set up seemingly impenetrable obstacles to keep black pilots on the ground. One hurdle became known as the so-called “Tuskegee Experiment,” in which pilots and their ground support staff were trained.
The men, who made up the all-black 99th Fighter Squadron, were not allowed to fly until 1941. Interestingly, that year, first lady Eleanor Roosevelt visited the Tuskegee Army Airfield in Tuskegee, Ala., and insisted on having a black pilot take her for a ride. She took the photographs she had taken of the experience to Washington to show President Roosevelt. Charles A. Anderson, the first black American to earn a pilot’s license, flew the first lady for the adventure.
“I graduated from high school in June, 1942 and I wanted to fly, but at that time they wanted people nominated for flying to all be college graduates, and they soon ran out of that pool of people. They changed it and said they would take high school grads, and created a new program called college training detachment — a program of four to six months to give [trainees] some of the courses they would have taken had they gone to college,” said Brown.
“In Minneapolis, I was the only black. I scored high — number five out of 105 — and all the white kids were sworn into the reserves. My paperwork had to go to Washington and it was in Washington where they created the large pool of black kids who wanted to fly,” he said. He was then sent to Biloxi, Miss., then on to Tuskegee, “because that’s where they wanted to train all the black pilots.”
He was 19-years-old when he graduated from flight training and obtained his wings. He became one of the pilots who flew the famed Red Tail P-51 Mustang, so named because the pilots painted the tails and the nose of their aircraft bright red.
He went overseas in the fall of 1944 and began flying in combat mission in Italy in November of that year. Even after the war, Brown said few people had ever heard of the black pilots. When he went into the military it was the U.S. Army Air Corps; in 1947 the division became the Air Force, which was integrated in 1949.
“Now we have black pilots all over the place. We were the best kept secret going,” he said, at least until 1995 when the movie The Tuskegee Airmen was released starring Laurence Fishburne
The trailer that houses the airmen’s signature aircraft and theater travels to schools nationwide, Brown said. He added that the CAF Red Tail organization is different from the Tuskegee Airmen’s project.
“The airmen is a national organization, but they don’t have an airplane or semi,” he said.
The exhibit will give visitors a free, interactive opportunity and they will learn about the CAF squadron’s six guiding principles: aim high, believe in yourself, use your brain, be ready to go, never quit, and expect to win.
Hours are from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Thursday and Friday, when youth, community groups, and the general public can visit. To reserve a private showing, call 419-243-8251. Also, the public is invited to an open house from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sept. 13.
The exhibit will also appear at the Liberty Aviation Museum in Port Clinton from Sept. 15 to 20, and at the Findlay Airport in Findlay from Sept. 22 to 26. Brown will visit the Findlay Airport on Sept. 25 at 10 a.m.
Contact Rose Russell at rrussell@theblade.com or 419-724-6178.
First Published September 6, 2015, 4:00 a.m.
