Between 20 and 30 students at Columbus Middle School watched as the pilot on the screen before them flew out over the landscape and pointed the nose of his plane toward the sky.
It was the end of a 30-minute video on the Tuskegee Airmen, the country’s first all-black squadron of pilots in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II. The video was part of the RISE ABOVE Traveling Exhibit, which travels around the country teaching people — primarily middle school students — about the airmen.
But the end of the film wasn’t what stuck out to 13-year-old Janiya Rowan.
“At the (beginning of the film, someone) said, ‘That little boy can’t do it because of his race,'” said Rowan, who is black.
After the film ended and the exhibit’s tour manager Jeanette Hollis asked if any of the students wanted to grow up to be pilots, Rowan’s hand shot into the air.
It’s a pretty common reaction from kids who see the film, said Hollis, who has shown the exhibit to about 20,000 kids per year since she and her husband Terry began touring with it in 2011.
“I will ask the kids when they get seated (before the film), does anybody want to be a pilot?'” Jeanette said. “And you might get one or two. And after the movie, I’ll go, ‘Now who wants to be a pilot?’ … You might have 10 or 15. It gives them something to think about.”
A still relevant message
Jeanette and Terry work for Commemorative Air Force, a nonprofit organization which restores airplanes. The organization’s RISE ABOVE Red Tail program teaches students and communities throughout the country about the Tuskegee Airmen.
The RISE ABOVE exhibit will be featured at the Wings Over Columbus air show Saturday and Sunday. But the city of Columbus, Columbus Municipal School District and Lowndes County School District evenly split the $4,000 fee to have the exhibit visit first CMS and, on Thursday, Caledonia Middle School, giving local kids access to the exhibit before this weekend.
“It is a great opportunity for out kids,” LCSD Superintendent Lynn Wright said. “It’s going to be stationed at Caledonia (Thursday) and they’re already booked solid for classes going through. Everybody’s so excited about it. … It’s awesome that our kids are going to get to experience this.”
CMSD Interim Superintendent Craig Shannon and Columbus Mayor Robert Smith also took a trip out to the middle school to see the exhibit Tuesday, as did representatives from the Columbus Air Force Base, which helped facilitate bringing the exhibit to the schools.
“The Red Tail message is as valid today and important today as it was in World War II,” said Columbus Air Force Base Chief of Public Affairs Sonic Johnson. “Because they were meant to fail. ‘Those black aviators can’t walk and chew gum at the same time, this will never work.’ … They painted their tails red because the skies were segregated as well. They weren’t allowed to fly in formation with white pilots.”
It wasn’t until after the Berlin Wall fell that Americans were able to access records from the Luftwaffe, the German Air Force, and learned the Red Tails hadn’t lost a single bomber formation they escorted, Johnson said. The Germans eventually came to fear the Tuskegee Airmen. Their reaction to seeing the airmen was, in Johnson’s words: “Dude … we don’t want to mess with these guys.”
Jeanette said the exhibit is important not just because it teaches that history, but because of the values it instills in kids.
“They do learn history and they get inspiration as well, because they see all the adversity that the Tuskegee Airmen went through,” she said. “I try to tell them that whatever adversity — and adversity comes in many shapes, forms and fashions. One person is not the same as the other person — but you can overcome whatever it is to accomplish your dream. And we use the story of the Tuskegee Airmen as a great tool for (the students) to see that they overcame everything that they had to overcome. They became very successful.
“The biggest thing is have a dream, having a plan and stick to it,” she added. “Believe in yourself that you can do it and it always works out.”
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