Source: Getty
More than 70 years ago, the U.S. military sought to keep its ranks entirely male and white, former Tuskegee Airman, Eugene Richardson visited local south jersey school St. Cecilia School in Pennsauken
to help encourage the black and other minority students to consider careers in the armed forces.
90 year old Richardson, was among the first black aviators activated by the U.S. armed forces over 70 years ago.
“Black kids need to know their history. They need to know how black people contributed to this country,” Richardson said after his presentation to the Aviation Adventure Club of the Catholic Partnership Schools
“They didn’t want black men to fly airplanes. They wanted black men digging ditches and sweeping floors and loading trucks,” Richardson said.
The Tuskegee Airmen would make their mark on the war. Out of the nearly 1,000 men who completed training at the former Tuskegee Institute in Alabama during World War II, 355 served as fighter pilots in Europe and North Africa. Nearly 70 of them died in combat while more than 30 became prisoners of war.
The airmen completed thousands of sorties over about 1,500 missions. They earned a number of honors, including Distinguished Flying Crosses, Legions of Merit, and Purple Hearts.
Richardson went on to say,”For most of the people in inner cities, their role models are sports stars, it’s actors and actresses, and it’s the musicians,” he said. “If you think about it, yes, there are some really good role models, but a lot of them are not.”
Marcus Williams and children’s book author Greg Burnham got to gether a super dope project called “Tuskegee Heirs: Flames of Destiny” series. Tuskegee Heirs is a futuristic sci-fi adventure that follows a squadron of young, gifted aviators who are forced to become Earth’s last line of defense against a menacing race of artificially intelligent villains bent on destroying civilization.
What is The Premise: The duo looks to pay homage to the historic Tuskegee Airmen, while bringing forth a new set of character rich young heroes. With a graphic novel set to release mid 2016, Marcus and Greg intend to push this project towards animation. Following in the Japanese animation genre’s age old practice of dropping unusually talented youths inside the cockpits of enormously powerful machines, the amazing pilots of this series will be no exception.
