Tuskegee stories

Alexander Jefferson was shot down over France and witnessed the horrors of Dachau concentration camp days after its liberation near the end of World War II.

Hiram Little participated in an act of civil disobedience that led to the eventual desegregation of the U.S. military.

Neither man joined the military to witness history. They just wanted to fly.

They were members of the Tuskegee Airmen, the all-black Army Air Corps unit. They are featured in the new documentary In Their Own Words: The Tuskegee Airmen and will attend its premiere tonight at the Imperial Theatre.

Mr. Jefferson, a retired teacher, entered the Army Air Corps with a degree from Clark University, a sense of obligation to his country and a desire to avoid the quartermaster corps, where many black enlistees ended up.

"It's dirty, nasty work, and that's where blacks were sent," he said during a recent telephone interview from his home in Detroit. "I wanted to go first class."

Earning wings with the Tuskegee Airmen was difficult.

It required a college education and passing a battery of physical and mental tests.

About 1,000 men were accepted and trained outside Tuskegee, Ala.

Mr. Jefferson flew 18 missions in a P-51 Mustang fighter before he was shot down and spent several months in a German prison camp.

However, he said his most traumatic moment was stumbling on the horrors of Dachau a few days after his own liberation.

"I witnessed, firsthand, man's inhumanity to man," he said.

Mr. Little, a retired postal worker, entered the Tuskegee program as an armorer before applying for flight training and becoming a bombardier. His most historic conflict, however, did not involve bombs. It involved beers.

In 1945, Mr. Little was assigned to Freeman Field in Indiana. The commander built a separate and not-at-all equal officer's club for the black airmen.

One night in protest, Mr. Little and about 100 other black officers entered the white officer's club and were arrested.

The event, which became known as the Freeman Field Mutiny, is often cited as the initial act leading to the desegregation of the armed forces in 1948.

"I saw it as a matter of self-preservation," Mr. Little said from his home in Atlanta. "I wanted to be treated as an individual. No better and no worse."

In 2007, the Tuskegee Airmen, as a group, were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, an honor usually reserved for individuals.

"There is a sense of well-being," Mr. Jefferson said. "We always knew that we could do these things so, in the end, we really didn't give a damn who knew it. But we appreciate the recognition. We also understand that 90 percent of the people that made this happen are gone. It falls on those of us that are left to carry on, and we are being whittled down to the bare minimum."

Reach Steven Uhles at (706) 823-3626 or steven.uhles@augustachronicle.com.