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POLITICAL PRESSURE
During World War II, the US military was racially segregated. Reflecting American society and law at the time, most black soldiers and sailors were restricted to labor battalions and other support positions. An experiment in the US Army Air Forces, however, showed that given equal opportunity and training. African Americans could fly in, command, and support combat units as well as anyone. The USAAF's black fliers, the so-called "Tuskegee Airmen," served with distinction in combat and directly contributed to the eventual integration of the US armed services, with the US Air Force leading the way.
In the late 1930s President Franklin D. Roosevelt anticipated that the United States could be drawn into a war with Europe. His administration, therefore, began a pilot training program in 1938 to create a reserve of trained civilian fliers in case of national emergency. After African-American leaders argued that blacks should share with whites the burden of defending the United States, the program was soon opened to African-Americans. In 1940 the Selective Training and Service Act banned racial discrimination in conscription, clearing the way for blacks to be trained for Air Corps service.
Tuskegee Institute, a black college founded in Alabama in 1881 by Booker T. Washington, participated in the Roosevelt administration's pilot training program. Tuskegee graduated its first civilian licensed pilots in May 1940 and was the only source of black military pilots in WWII. |