May 20, 2009 • 18 mins
The Tuskegee Airmen made up the first African American air squadron. Tune in to this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com to learn more about desegregation in the American army and how the Tuskegee Airmen helped win World War II.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Candice Keen. You're joined by staff writer Jane
mc grab hey. Jane, do you remember a little while
ago when we did a podcast about the Navajo code
(00:22):
talkers and World War Two? Yeah, it was one of
your favorites in particular, and love the Navajo co talkers. Well,
there's another minority group that contributed very, very much so
to the success of the Allied forces in World War
Two that we didn't cover and that podcast, and I
believe we said we were going to save it for
another day, and that day is today, So um, buckle
(00:45):
up tight because we're gonna talk about the Tuskegee Airmen. Yeah.
This is a really cool African American UM Air UM
Army Air Corps and during World War Two and they
contributed a lot to the war. But to give you
some context, before that, African Americans weren't allowed to fly
at all in the military. In addition to that, the
whole military was segregated into units and throughout um World
(01:09):
War two and it took I think efforts like the
Husky Yarman and a lot of other African American heroes
during World War Two. To really change that policy, desegregation
was made official through executive order issued by President Harry Truman. Now,
an executive order, just to bring you up to speed,
is um a statement from the president, and they've been
(01:31):
in practice since George Washington's administration, and they're made constitutional
by Article to Section one. Basically, an executive order guides
federal agencies to carry out laws and policies that Congress
has passed. And I've gotten some good information about executive
orders from a website called This Nation dot com, and
(01:53):
the website explains that executive orders don't have to be
approved by Congress, but it is a statement directly from
the president, and what he says goes you know, the
commander in chief, and he's the chief executive, and he
lays the laws of the land. And this is a
really important point to bring up is that UM, it's
not subject to legislative vote. So when something like especially
(02:14):
in this case, when something will have a lot of
difficulty passing through uh Congress, the President can, in certain circumstances,
circumvent that that were by issuing the executive order. And
there's a couple of variations on the typical executive order,
and one is a statement that pertains to defense and security,
(02:35):
and another one is more ceremonial in nature. The example
that this Nation dot Com gave was national bring your
Kid to Work Day, which we actually had at the
House Staff Works dot Com office last week. I didn't
know that was an executive order. Apparently so apparently so.
And what you mentioned before about presidents using the executive
orders circumvent Congress, this was a really sticky issue that
(02:56):
came up during the Bill Clinton administration, and he was
no to pass hundreds upon hundreds of executive orders to
get by Republicans in Congress. Essentially, I think he's still
very much critiqued for doing so. But some pretty famous
ones in history are which, as we've learned, was Truman's
statement to integrate the military, and then Eisenhower's executive order
(03:21):
to desegregate schools, that Kennedy and Johnson error passed executive
orders to help end discrimination in federal housing, and then
Reagan actually issued an executive order to prevent federal funds
being used for campaigns about abortion, which Clinton later overturned.
So even just from these examples, you can see the
(03:41):
wide scope that an executive order can pertain to, and
was really really important because if you look at the
premise of World War Two, it was essentially hinged upon
the fact that Nazis were discriminating against the Jews, and
so the idea that the United States have become involved
(04:01):
in a war on foreign soil that was about discrimination
of an ethnic group, and yet within the United States
there were still a discrimination towards African Americans. It just
seemed really really contradictory. Yeah, and it was really shot
the arm to show Americans, I think, where racism could lead.
You know, um, certain public figures before the nineteen thirties
(04:24):
and the World War Two were behind eugenics, and I
think it had more acceptance at this point, but then
when you saw where that led um in Nazi Germany.
You know, you can make the point that the American
public didn't know everything that was going on during the
Holocaust until after the war, but they did know some
racist laws that were going on, discriminatory laws against the
(04:45):
Jews during the Nazi era. So you can definitely see
how the Americans saw where eugenics was leading. And I
think this was really a reflection it made them look
upon themselves a little harsher about their own discriminary laws
and say like, well, we can't really throw rocks, you know,
if we're in a glass half right exactly. And that's
(05:07):
what's their poignant about the order. And you can look
at up online. You can go to Truman Library dot
org and find a copy of the executive order. It's
from July and I'll just read part of it. It
is hereby declared to be the policy of the President
that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for
all persons and the Armed Services, without regard to race, color, religion,
(05:32):
or national origin. This policy shall be put into effect
as rapidly as possible, having due regard to the time
required to effectuate any necessary changes, without impairing efficiency or morale.
And a little bit later in the podcast, we're going
to get to the language that Truman us and how
people in Congress actually manipulated it to ah, I guess
(05:55):
prolonged integration in the military, but the executi of order
that Truman issue would not have been possible. I don't
think without the successes of the Tuskegee air Men really
proving that integration wasn't just necessary on the grounds of
your equality for all mankind, but because this group proved
(06:17):
that African American pilots and the military had such bravery
and valor and such skill, they could not be ignored
and treated as unequal anymore. Yeah, and we should also
mention that, you know, when you think of the civil
rights movement, it didn't really take effect until the fifties
and sixties, but you have some sort of very important
predecessors to people like um Martin, Luther King Jr. In
(06:38):
In A. Philip Randolph, and Grant Reynolds, and they were
really active during this time. They ended up being very
active in in in pushing for the Executive Order one.
But before that, they were very active in pushing Franklin
Roosevelt into issuing Executive Order eight eight zero two. And
this band discrimination in industries that had federal contracts, which
(07:00):
was very important when um the war was making breaking
out in Europe and the United States was active in
a lot of war production, and so this order made
it possible for a lot of jobs to open up
for African Americans, and this prompted a mass migration of
African Americans out of the Jim Crow South, So they
(07:22):
were moving to cities that you know, discrimination was still
certainly present, but not as um severe as in the South.
So we're talking about places like Los Angeless and Seattle
and yeah, so um, they're really enjoying new freedoms that
they had a sense of empowerment at this time. And
so you can see, um, with this initial FDR executive order,
(07:47):
things starting to change in the seeds of the civil
rights movement starting and this uh, you know, it leads
into the the idea of the Tusky Yarman because the
civil rights leaders also pushed for a change in the
rule about how African Americ because we're banned from flying
in the military. And when this change, the War Department
created the ninety nine Pursuit Squadron of the U. S.
(08:07):
Army Air Corps. And we should know this wasn't the
Air Force because the Air Force didn't quite exist yet.
And if you look at the history of the Tuskegee
Airmen and even history of African Americans in World War Two,
there's a lot of really, really great stories of men
who really just threw off the chains of oppression and
took the opportunity to serve their country. And one that
(08:29):
comes to mind and when that Jane's written about in
this fantastic article about the Tuskegee Airman is Doris Miller,
who was a cook on the USS West Virginia and
he happened to be there and Pearl Harbor the day
that Pearl Harbor was attacked and he had actually been
an order to abandon ship. He actually manned a fifty
caliber anti aircraft machine gun and shot down some Japanese
(08:51):
planes even though you know it had no training. Yeah,
it is, It's fantastic and it was just it It's
a great story especially and this is the beginning of
American the American entrance into the war. And immediately you
see this this heroism, this valor from African American precisely,
and so um, I think that the civil rights organizations
(09:12):
that existed at this time would use examples like the
you know, the Doris Miller story and then other examples
of African Americans showing valor and saying, with training, imagine
what these men could do. And so this leads us
to Tuskegee, Alabama. Yeah, that's right. And so I mentioned
they created the squadron um. They decided to train them
(09:35):
at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, which I also had
an airfield there. It was segregated, obviously there was segregation
still going on at this point, but it was it
was a great move forward because they were finally able
to fly in the military and they started out with
single engine planes and they were led by Captain Benjamin O.
Davis Jr. And he would later become the first African
(09:56):
American general in the Air Force. But I think he
was known for being a real discipline arian. Yeah, and interestingly,
his dad became the first African American general in the army.
He came in with with some credit, you know, uh,
some distinguished family there's I think that family in particular
made some big strides for African Americans in in the military.
(10:16):
They started out with training and areas like navigation and
meteorology and there's who qualified went on to the airfield
for pilot training and they first class graduated in March
of nineteen forty two. But there was one more year
of training before they would actually get to fight in
the war. And their first real opportunity or they're entree
(10:37):
into the worst day was the Allied invasion of Italy. Yeah,
and this happened with their first mission happened in June second,
nineteen forty three, and they flew P forty Warhawks. This
was very successful attack, and a month later they actually
successfully fought the German Air Force. So they started out
with a bang. Unfortunately, there was a lag after that
(10:58):
where they weren't they didn't have kills on their record
for for a few more months after that. So the
kernel of the fighter group that they were a part of,
We're really just was really satisfied with the ninety nine
Tuskegee men, and he was so upset them he actually
filed a complaint and he said that they weren't aggressive
(11:20):
enough in the in fighting and uh, he said that
they also like discipline, which is a real strike. I mean, obviously,
you have this experimental first African American squadron flying, and
you have their colonel immediately, you know, issuing this complain
about them. Is it really could have dissolved um the experiment. Uh,
(11:41):
entirely so. And I'm inclined to believe that this the
trajectory of this story of the Tuskegee Airmen isn't too
different from what we learned about with the Navajo code talkers.
The idea that these men were trained so thoroughly and
then sent to help people in the field communicate messages,
but they weren't used properly. People didn't fully understand what
(12:02):
their mission and their purpose there was, and so they
were deemed worthless. And I'd say that when they got there,
people had headed out for them, so maybe they started off,
you know, and until these men were really able to
prove that they knew their stuff, they were skilled, they
just needed better direction, They needed more seamless integration into
(12:23):
the war front. And David Davis really argued that point,
and that's really what prevented them from dissolving entirely, is
that he was able to when the complaint was filed,
he was able to argue for the Dusky gearman and
and uh, they did an investigation and found that, you know,
they were doing just as well as everybody else in
there in their circumstances, so they were able to go
back into combat. January, the squad squadron helped fight a
(12:48):
German air invasion and shot down twelve planes and this
was able to get them a unit get the unit
Distinguished Unit citation. So this was one of their first, uh,
you know, just pst ages awards for something they had
done right. And so in some in World War Two,
there were at least nine hundred nine thousand African Americans
(13:10):
serving in the military, with five hundred thousand of those overseas.
So with those numbers and with the distinguished unit citation,
we have concrete evidence that these are very effectual men
and they are serving their country. And so that's when
we have the beginning of the executive Order coming into play.
(13:30):
To give you some more context on what was going
on in the government regarding these civil rights issues in
the military. During the forties, you see a lot of
really um monumental Supreme Court cases regarding civil rights at
the at home. At least in four they banned all
white political primaries that were occurring in the South, and
two years after that they ruled that segregation in in
(13:53):
interstate bus travel was unconstitutional. So you see the Supreme
Court getting in line with these civil rights issues at
this time. And also Harry Truman at this time, he
um wrote that he saw the hypocrisy going on in
the fact that his troops were overseas promoting democracy, promoting acceptance,
and at the same time his own military was segregated.
(14:14):
And so you have the President Supreme Court in line
with trying to push this this civil rights issue. But unfortunately,
at the time, Congress had a lot of Southern Congressmen
in it that were blocking a lot of civil rights
laws at this time, like anti lynching legislation. And that's
not to say that Southerners were the only barriers to
(14:36):
really fulfilling the orders of Nanny on anyone. The executive order,
I think that once it was actually put into play,
there were nearly five years is the common number that
I keep saying. Five years that passed before people really
began to fully integrate African Americans into the military and
to treat them with acceptance and with dignity and with
the camaraderie that is befitting a man of your equal
(14:59):
rank in the MI military. Yeah, that's a good point,
and m with the events leading up to the actual
order you have. I mentioned Randolphin Reynolds earlier, the civil
rights leader. They actually formed the committee against Jim Crow
and Military service in Training. And when they formed that,
they actually uh sent a letter to Truman threatening that
(15:20):
if he didn't make this order of a military integration
that the African American youth would actually boycott the draft.
And this was a huge issue for Truman, especially because
he was actually in an election year. Ninety was an
election year for him. He's coming up to re election,
so you have this situation where you know he wants
the black vote at the times, right right, I mean,
(15:42):
the African Americans made up about ten percent of the
population in America, so the black vote was a significant
part of his of his reelection, and this was able
to solidify it and making promises like this is um
not something that ended with Truman, if you'll recall that
and Barack Obama's campaign, he actually almost too uh overturn
(16:02):
the sort of don't ask, don't tell policy in the military,
because right now gays Lesbians are allowed to serve with
with full disclosure. We can we have the Clinton era
of the donas, don't tell policy, sort of a compromise,
sort of a compromise, but from what I understand, it
can be more restrictive than helpful. The idea that you serve,
you know, with a mask ever your identity, and you're
(16:22):
serving a little bit of fear. But now, with recruitment
and an all time low, people are willing to overlook
the donalast don't tell policy, and which anyone who's willing
to go and fight in the war is sort of
being tapped into serve us. So you can see sort
of the executive order language thing, race, color, religion, and
national origin. You can see sexual orientation and exactly. And
(16:45):
the donas don'tell policy is almost sixteen years old now,
if you can believe that, I can't believe sixteen years
have gone by. But on a happier note, back in
line with the valor and bravery of the Tuskegee Airmen,
George Lucas, famous of course for with thought little movie
about I think it's a star Star Wars. I think
that sounds right, Okay, Anyway, he made a movie like
(17:07):
Star Wars or something. Anyway, we get flak from the
tech team on that one. I really mentioned to that,
and I read on the Daily Planet that he's been
wanting to do a film about the Tuskegee Airmen for
almost twenty years and he has finally begun filming in
Europe a movie called Red Tales, and it's going to
start Cuba Gooding Junior Terrence Howard, Neo and method man. Yeah,
(17:30):
That's cool because Cuba Gooding Junior was actually he played
Dorris Miller in in the Pearl Harbor movie a few
years ago, talked about before, so that's really appropriate. I
think it's it's a long time coming because it's the
story is made for Hollywood, it is, and one of
the directors that he's got on board is Anthony Hemingway,
famous for his work with HBOS, The Wire and Again
entertainment years. I'm sure that some of these details are
(17:52):
subject to change, so an here now. When they do
come out, hopefully we'll be talking about it on our
blog as well, exactly exactly. Jane and I blow every
day about the latest in politics, uh, history, news, UH discoveries,
everything everything really, so if you haven't seen our blog yet,
you'll probably get a chuckle and maybe even learn a
(18:12):
little something and be sure also to send us your
feedback at history podcast at how stuff works dot com.
And if you want to learn more about the Tuskegee Airmen,
you can read the article on what this podcast is
based called what was So Important About Executive Order on
how stuff works dot com for more on this and
(18:35):
thousands of other topics. Because at how stuff works dot
com
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Candice Keen. You're joined by staff writer Jane
mc grab hey. Jane, do you remember a little while
ago when we did a podcast about the Navajo code
(00:22):
talkers and World War Two? Yeah, it was one of
your favorites in particular, and love the Navajo co talkers. Well,
there's another minority group that contributed very, very much so
to the success of the Allied forces in World War
Two that we didn't cover and that podcast, and I
believe we said we were going to save it for
another day, and that day is today, So um, buckle
(00:45):
up tight because we're gonna talk about the Tuskegee Airmen. Yeah.
This is a really cool African American UM Air UM
Army Air Corps and during World War Two and they
contributed a lot to the war. But to give you
some context, before that, African Americans weren't allowed to fly
at all in the military. In addition to that, the
whole military was segregated into units and throughout um World
(01:09):
War two and it took I think efforts like the
Husky Yarman and a lot of other African American heroes
during World War Two. To really change that policy, desegregation
was made official through executive order issued by President Harry Truman. Now,
an executive order, just to bring you up to speed,
is um a statement from the president, and they've been
(01:31):
in practice since George Washington's administration, and they're made constitutional
by Article to Section one. Basically, an executive order guides
federal agencies to carry out laws and policies that Congress
has passed. And I've gotten some good information about executive
orders from a website called This Nation dot com, and
(01:53):
the website explains that executive orders don't have to be
approved by Congress, but it is a statement directly from
the president, and what he says goes you know, the
commander in chief, and he's the chief executive, and he
lays the laws of the land. And this is a
really important point to bring up is that UM, it's
not subject to legislative vote. So when something like especially
(02:14):
in this case, when something will have a lot of
difficulty passing through uh Congress, the President can, in certain circumstances,
circumvent that that were by issuing the executive order. And
there's a couple of variations on the typical executive order,
and one is a statement that pertains to defense and security,
(02:35):
and another one is more ceremonial in nature. The example
that this Nation dot Com gave was national bring your
Kid to Work Day, which we actually had at the
House Staff Works dot Com office last week. I didn't
know that was an executive order. Apparently so apparently so.
And what you mentioned before about presidents using the executive
orders circumvent Congress, this was a really sticky issue that
(02:56):
came up during the Bill Clinton administration, and he was
no to pass hundreds upon hundreds of executive orders to
get by Republicans in Congress. Essentially, I think he's still
very much critiqued for doing so. But some pretty famous
ones in history are which, as we've learned, was Truman's
statement to integrate the military, and then Eisenhower's executive order
(03:21):
to desegregate schools, that Kennedy and Johnson error passed executive
orders to help end discrimination in federal housing, and then
Reagan actually issued an executive order to prevent federal funds
being used for campaigns about abortion, which Clinton later overturned.
So even just from these examples, you can see the
(03:41):
wide scope that an executive order can pertain to, and
was really really important because if you look at the
premise of World War Two, it was essentially hinged upon
the fact that Nazis were discriminating against the Jews, and
so the idea that the United States have become involved
(04:01):
in a war on foreign soil that was about discrimination
of an ethnic group, and yet within the United States
there were still a discrimination towards African Americans. It just
seemed really really contradictory. Yeah, and it was really shot
the arm to show Americans, I think, where racism could lead.
You know, um, certain public figures before the nineteen thirties
(04:24):
and the World War Two were behind eugenics, and I
think it had more acceptance at this point, but then
when you saw where that led um in Nazi Germany.
You know, you can make the point that the American
public didn't know everything that was going on during the
Holocaust until after the war, but they did know some
racist laws that were going on, discriminatory laws against the
(04:45):
Jews during the Nazi era. So you can definitely see
how the Americans saw where eugenics was leading. And I
think this was really a reflection it made them look
upon themselves a little harsher about their own discriminary laws
and say like, well, we can't really throw rocks, you know,
if we're in a glass half right exactly. And that's
(05:07):
what's their poignant about the order. And you can look
at up online. You can go to Truman Library dot
org and find a copy of the executive order. It's
from July and I'll just read part of it. It
is hereby declared to be the policy of the President
that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for
all persons and the Armed Services, without regard to race, color, religion,
(05:32):
or national origin. This policy shall be put into effect
as rapidly as possible, having due regard to the time
required to effectuate any necessary changes, without impairing efficiency or morale.
And a little bit later in the podcast, we're going
to get to the language that Truman us and how
people in Congress actually manipulated it to ah, I guess
(05:55):
prolonged integration in the military, but the executi of order
that Truman issue would not have been possible. I don't
think without the successes of the Tuskegee air Men really
proving that integration wasn't just necessary on the grounds of
your equality for all mankind, but because this group proved
(06:17):
that African American pilots and the military had such bravery
and valor and such skill, they could not be ignored
and treated as unequal anymore. Yeah, and we should also
mention that, you know, when you think of the civil
rights movement, it didn't really take effect until the fifties
and sixties, but you have some sort of very important
predecessors to people like um Martin, Luther King Jr. In
(06:38):
In A. Philip Randolph, and Grant Reynolds, and they were
really active during this time. They ended up being very
active in in in pushing for the Executive Order one.
But before that, they were very active in pushing Franklin
Roosevelt into issuing Executive Order eight eight zero two. And
this band discrimination in industries that had federal contracts, which
(07:00):
was very important when um the war was making breaking
out in Europe and the United States was active in
a lot of war production, and so this order made
it possible for a lot of jobs to open up
for African Americans, and this prompted a mass migration of
African Americans out of the Jim Crow South, So they
(07:22):
were moving to cities that you know, discrimination was still
certainly present, but not as um severe as in the South.
So we're talking about places like Los Angeless and Seattle
and yeah, so um, they're really enjoying new freedoms that
they had a sense of empowerment at this time. And
so you can see, um, with this initial FDR executive order,
(07:47):
things starting to change in the seeds of the civil
rights movement starting and this uh, you know, it leads
into the the idea of the Tusky Yarman because the
civil rights leaders also pushed for a change in the
rule about how African Americ because we're banned from flying
in the military. And when this change, the War Department
created the ninety nine Pursuit Squadron of the U. S.
(08:07):
Army Air Corps. And we should know this wasn't the
Air Force because the Air Force didn't quite exist yet.
And if you look at the history of the Tuskegee
Airmen and even history of African Americans in World War Two,
there's a lot of really, really great stories of men
who really just threw off the chains of oppression and
took the opportunity to serve their country. And one that
(08:29):
comes to mind and when that Jane's written about in
this fantastic article about the Tuskegee Airman is Doris Miller,
who was a cook on the USS West Virginia and
he happened to be there and Pearl Harbor the day
that Pearl Harbor was attacked and he had actually been
an order to abandon ship. He actually manned a fifty
caliber anti aircraft machine gun and shot down some Japanese
(08:51):
planes even though you know it had no training. Yeah,
it is, It's fantastic and it was just it It's
a great story especially and this is the beginning of
American the American entrance into the war. And immediately you
see this this heroism, this valor from African American precisely,
and so um, I think that the civil rights organizations
(09:12):
that existed at this time would use examples like the
you know, the Doris Miller story and then other examples
of African Americans showing valor and saying, with training, imagine
what these men could do. And so this leads us
to Tuskegee, Alabama. Yeah, that's right. And so I mentioned
they created the squadron um. They decided to train them
(09:35):
at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, which I also had
an airfield there. It was segregated, obviously there was segregation
still going on at this point, but it was it
was a great move forward because they were finally able
to fly in the military and they started out with
single engine planes and they were led by Captain Benjamin O.
Davis Jr. And he would later become the first African
(09:56):
American general in the Air Force. But I think he
was known for being a real discipline arian. Yeah, and interestingly,
his dad became the first African American general in the army.
He came in with with some credit, you know, uh,
some distinguished family there's I think that family in particular
made some big strides for African Americans in in the military.
(10:16):
They started out with training and areas like navigation and
meteorology and there's who qualified went on to the airfield
for pilot training and they first class graduated in March
of nineteen forty two. But there was one more year
of training before they would actually get to fight in
the war. And their first real opportunity or they're entree
(10:37):
into the worst day was the Allied invasion of Italy. Yeah,
and this happened with their first mission happened in June second,
nineteen forty three, and they flew P forty Warhawks. This
was very successful attack, and a month later they actually
successfully fought the German Air Force. So they started out
with a bang. Unfortunately, there was a lag after that
(10:58):
where they weren't they didn't have kills on their record
for for a few more months after that. So the
kernel of the fighter group that they were a part of,
We're really just was really satisfied with the ninety nine
Tuskegee men, and he was so upset them he actually
filed a complaint and he said that they weren't aggressive
(11:20):
enough in the in fighting and uh, he said that
they also like discipline, which is a real strike. I mean, obviously,
you have this experimental first African American squadron flying, and
you have their colonel immediately, you know, issuing this complain
about them. Is it really could have dissolved um the experiment. Uh,
(11:41):
entirely so. And I'm inclined to believe that this the
trajectory of this story of the Tuskegee Airmen isn't too
different from what we learned about with the Navajo code talkers.
The idea that these men were trained so thoroughly and
then sent to help people in the field communicate messages,
but they weren't used properly. People didn't fully understand what
(12:02):
their mission and their purpose there was, and so they
were deemed worthless. And I'd say that when they got there,
people had headed out for them, so maybe they started off,
you know, and until these men were really able to
prove that they knew their stuff, they were skilled, they
just needed better direction, They needed more seamless integration into
(12:23):
the war front. And David Davis really argued that point,
and that's really what prevented them from dissolving entirely, is
that he was able to when the complaint was filed,
he was able to argue for the Dusky gearman and
and uh, they did an investigation and found that, you know,
they were doing just as well as everybody else in
there in their circumstances, so they were able to go
back into combat. January, the squad squadron helped fight a
(12:48):
German air invasion and shot down twelve planes and this
was able to get them a unit get the unit
Distinguished Unit citation. So this was one of their first, uh,
you know, just pst ages awards for something they had
done right. And so in some in World War Two,
there were at least nine hundred nine thousand African Americans
(13:10):
serving in the military, with five hundred thousand of those overseas.
So with those numbers and with the distinguished unit citation,
we have concrete evidence that these are very effectual men
and they are serving their country. And so that's when
we have the beginning of the executive Order coming into play.
(13:30):
To give you some more context on what was going
on in the government regarding these civil rights issues in
the military. During the forties, you see a lot of
really um monumental Supreme Court cases regarding civil rights at
the at home. At least in four they banned all
white political primaries that were occurring in the South, and
two years after that they ruled that segregation in in
(13:53):
interstate bus travel was unconstitutional. So you see the Supreme
Court getting in line with these civil rights issues at
this time. And also Harry Truman at this time, he
um wrote that he saw the hypocrisy going on in
the fact that his troops were overseas promoting democracy, promoting acceptance,
and at the same time his own military was segregated.
(14:14):
And so you have the President Supreme Court in line
with trying to push this this civil rights issue. But unfortunately,
at the time, Congress had a lot of Southern Congressmen
in it that were blocking a lot of civil rights
laws at this time, like anti lynching legislation. And that's
not to say that Southerners were the only barriers to
(14:36):
really fulfilling the orders of Nanny on anyone. The executive order,
I think that once it was actually put into play,
there were nearly five years is the common number that
I keep saying. Five years that passed before people really
began to fully integrate African Americans into the military and
to treat them with acceptance and with dignity and with
the camaraderie that is befitting a man of your equal
(14:59):
rank in the MI military. Yeah, that's a good point,
and m with the events leading up to the actual
order you have. I mentioned Randolphin Reynolds earlier, the civil
rights leader. They actually formed the committee against Jim Crow
and Military service in Training. And when they formed that,
they actually uh sent a letter to Truman threatening that
(15:20):
if he didn't make this order of a military integration
that the African American youth would actually boycott the draft.
And this was a huge issue for Truman, especially because
he was actually in an election year. Ninety was an
election year for him. He's coming up to re election,
so you have this situation where you know he wants
the black vote at the times, right right, I mean,
(15:42):
the African Americans made up about ten percent of the
population in America, so the black vote was a significant
part of his of his reelection, and this was able
to solidify it and making promises like this is um
not something that ended with Truman, if you'll recall that
and Barack Obama's campaign, he actually almost too uh overturn
(16:02):
the sort of don't ask, don't tell policy in the military,
because right now gays Lesbians are allowed to serve with
with full disclosure. We can we have the Clinton era
of the donas, don't tell policy, sort of a compromise,
sort of a compromise, but from what I understand, it
can be more restrictive than helpful. The idea that you serve,
you know, with a mask ever your identity, and you're
(16:22):
serving a little bit of fear. But now, with recruitment
and an all time low, people are willing to overlook
the donalast don't tell policy, and which anyone who's willing
to go and fight in the war is sort of
being tapped into serve us. So you can see sort
of the executive order language thing, race, color, religion, and
national origin. You can see sexual orientation and exactly. And
(16:45):
the donas don'tell policy is almost sixteen years old now,
if you can believe that, I can't believe sixteen years
have gone by. But on a happier note, back in
line with the valor and bravery of the Tuskegee Airmen,
George Lucas, famous of course for with thought little movie
about I think it's a star Star Wars. I think
that sounds right, Okay, Anyway, he made a movie like
(17:07):
Star Wars or something. Anyway, we get flak from the
tech team on that one. I really mentioned to that,
and I read on the Daily Planet that he's been
wanting to do a film about the Tuskegee Airmen for
almost twenty years and he has finally begun filming in
Europe a movie called Red Tales, and it's going to
start Cuba Gooding Junior Terrence Howard, Neo and method man. Yeah,
(17:30):
That's cool because Cuba Gooding Junior was actually he played
Dorris Miller in in the Pearl Harbor movie a few
years ago, talked about before, so that's really appropriate. I
think it's it's a long time coming because it's the
story is made for Hollywood, it is, and one of
the directors that he's got on board is Anthony Hemingway,
famous for his work with HBOS, The Wire and Again
entertainment years. I'm sure that some of these details are
(17:52):
subject to change, so an here now. When they do
come out, hopefully we'll be talking about it on our
blog as well, exactly exactly. Jane and I blow every
day about the latest in politics, uh, history, news, UH discoveries,
everything everything really, so if you haven't seen our blog yet,
you'll probably get a chuckle and maybe even learn a
(18:12):
little something and be sure also to send us your
feedback at history podcast at how stuff works dot com.
And if you want to learn more about the Tuskegee Airmen,
you can read the article on what this podcast is
based called what was So Important About Executive Order on
how stuff works dot com for more on this and
(18:35):
thousands of other topics. Because at how stuff works dot
com
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