Movie Pays Tribute To ‘Tuskegee Airman’

During World War II, a group of black Army Air Forces pilots valiantly fought two enemy forces - Nazism and racism - to become one of the most decorated squadrons in American military history.

They were known as the Tuskegee airmen, after the segregated military complex near Tuskegee, Ala., where they were trained. They were idealistic, college-educated men, boys really, willing to fight and die for a country that denied them the rights and privileges of first-class citizenship.

Their actions and determination helped remove racial barriers and push the military toward full integration; their heroism helped vindicate a race accused of lacking the courage, skill or intelligence to fight a war.

They were men like Percy Sutton, who became the borough president of Manhattan; Dr. Roscoe C. Brown Jr., who became the president of Bronx Community College; Charles Diggs Jr., who was later a representative from Michigan; William Coleman, who was secretary of Transportation in the Gerald Ford administration; Coleman Young, who became mayor of Detroit, and Chappie James, the first black fourstar general in the U.S. military.

Relegated to the role of escorting bomber crews that were primarily white, the Tuskegee airmen never lost a bomber. In their fighter planes, they destroyed or damaged some 400 enemy aircraft by the end of the war. They were awarded more than 850 medals, 95 of them Distinguished Flying Crosses. Nevertheless, their feats have received little attention in the half-century since the war ended.

Tonight, HBO Pictures pays homage to those aviators in “The Tuskegee Airmen,” a two-hour movie that starts at 8:30 p.m. The film dramatizes the story of the 99th Fighter Squadron through the eyes of five new recruits: Hannibal Lee (Laurence Fishburne), Billy Roberts (Cuba Gooding Jr.), Walter Peoples (Allen Payne), Leroy Cappy (Malcolm-Jamal Warner) and Lewis Johns (Mekhi Phifer).

Brought together by a common goal, to serve their country, and a common passion, flying, the recruits find they must contend with the Jim Crow customs of the Deep South and the Army’s disdain and prejudice to prove themselves worthy of flying in combat for their country.

This Price Entertainment production, directed by Robert Markowitz, is based on a story by Robert W. Williams, who graduated at the top of his Tuskegee air-training class. For Williams, the film is the culmination of a 43-year effort to bring this neglected chapter in American history to the attention of a broader audience.

“This is a story about black people and our struggle as a people to get the right to fight with dignity for our country,” said Williams, 73, a writer and actor. “This story couldn’t simply be about planes, bullets and guns. It had to be about people overcoming stupid, racially motivated roadblocks and succeeding in spite of them.”

After the war, Williams worked as an executive at Ebony magazine. In 1952, he read that 20th Century Fox wanted to make a film about the Tuskegee airmen. He flew to Hollywood and met with executives at the studio. The year was 1953.

“By then, the studio had concluded that all World War II films had run their cycle,” Williams recalled recently in a telephone interview from Pasadena, Calif., where he lives. “But I never gave up on the concept. It was important that the story be told, not only so our young blacks are aware of their heroes, but that whites understand that blacks have been and still are contributing, patriotic Americans.”

Today, members of that elite corps look back upon their war experiences with equanimity in their voices. They believed then, as now, that by proving themselves on the battlefields abroad, they could pave the way to freedom and equality at home.

“Segregation is why the government brought us together,” said Brown, 73, who was one of the first American pilots to shoot down a German jet during the war. “But we ended segregation. Our success ended segregation.”

Many of the original Tuskegee airmen, men now in their 60s and 70s, have maintained close ties. In 1972, the Tuskegee Airmen Inc., a national, nonprofit organization, was formed by some of the original Tuskegee airmen and their descendants.