Tuskegee Airmen: 'Nobody wanted us' in combat

Veteran combat pilot Milton Williams has never forgotten the greeting he received when World War II ended in Europe and he returned to the U.S. on a ship.

“When we got off the boat in Virginia and came down the gangplank ... there was a military person, and he was pointing. He said 'White to the right, black to the left.' We knew we were home,” the 92-year-old said.

Williams and two other “Tuskegee Airmen” — 90-year-old Julian H. Johnson and 88-year-old Hollis Cornelius Jr. — shared their stories about the war with students this week at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in Aurora.

All three received training in Tuskegee, Alabama, where the war department had set up a program to train African-Americans how to fly aircraft.

They agreed, however, that many military personnel viewed the program as “an experiment” that they hoped might fail. “Early on, the war department came out with a statement that said blacks were incapable of flying sophisticatedly and correctly, we didn't have the intelligence, we didn't have the courage,” Williams said.

Cornelius said Tuskegee was simply “an anomaly that was imposed to shut people up” at a time when thousands of eager African-Americans were applying for the Army Air Corps, but being denied because of segregation.

“You knew you were an experiment, but you didn't go in as a guinea pig. You went in as just another black guy who wanted to fly,” Cornelius said.

But Williams said anyone who formed the program with little faith in the trainees made one big mistake.

“You don't choose the best and expect them to fail,” he said with a smile, drawing applause from students, teachers and other members of the Chicago Chapter of the Tuskegee Airmen who were in attendance.

Some of the men trained at Tuskegee became pilots, while others took on the role of navigator or bombardier. They all learned a variety of skills that were necessary to be part of a squadron or ground support unit, but many never had a chance to put those skills to the test.

“Nobody wanted us,” Cornelius said. “There was never any intention that Tuskegee personnel would be in combat.”

Less than 1,000 trainees were allowed to graduate. Of them, fewer than 400 went overseas.

As the war dwindled, conditions improved, but there was still racial tension.

Johnson received training at Tuskegee, but also in several other states. When he was sent to Monroe, Louisiana, shortly before the war ended, he remembers having a cook and being able to order breakfast. The acceptance, he said, was great.

However, the officer club and swimming pool were off limits, he said. Black servicemen were only allowed to use the swimming pool on the seventh day of the week, after which it would get cleaned so the other men could use it.

“We wrote a letter to the inspector general informing him of this particular treatment, which we were not in favor of, and requested he either change their methods or he could give us all our discharges and send us home,” Johnson said.

Their outcry resulted in Johnson being sent home to Chicago sooner than the rest of his group.

Being in the North was better than being in the South, though. Many of the Tuskegee airmen who went overseas ended up settling there upon their return and some, Williams said, “just disappeared.”

“They didn't want any more part of anything in this country,” he said. “There was some ill treatment in Europe, but most of it was from our fellow American pilots.”

That feeling hit Williams, too, when he returned to his hometown of Little Rock.

“I got home and had to go to the back of the bus again and go up to the crow's nest in the theater where there was room for maybe 35 or 40 blacks. I knew that I had to leave Arkansas,” he said, adding that despite taking part in more than 30 combat missions overseas, he wasn't even allowed to join the National Guard back home.

The event was organized in part by Rogina Ruffin, who is the mother of a former IMSA student who went on to become an Air Force fighter pilot.

“In 2012, he took a group of young people from around the country and he went to Tuskegee, where you gentlemen did your training,” she said.

Ruffin is also president of the Illinois chapter of Shades of Blue, a nonprofit that she said is now partnering with IMSA to try to bring more aviation and aerospace career awareness to underprivileged young people.

She hopes this week's visit helped students understand the importance of keeping the Tuskegee Airmen's legacy alive.

“One day these men won't be here to tell their stories,” she said. “People like myself ... we don't have any direct lineage to what they did, but we're pledging to keep the legacy going.”