Black History Month: Honoring The Tuskegee Airmen

By: Jordan Bucknor ‘22

If you don’t know about the Tuskegee Airmen, you should.

The Tuskegee Airmen were the first Black military aviators in the U.S. Army Air Corps. They’re best known for the extraordinary efforts in the aerial warfare of World War II and for challenging the stereotypes that had kept Black Americans from serving as pilots. Together, they encouraged the eventual integration of the U.S. Armed Forces. If what they’ve done already wasn’t amazing enough, to this day, they continue to give back to the world with the Tuskegee Airmen Scholarship Foundation.

Oh, but that’s not all. To make it even better, some of them are Trojans! Two of whom, Jerry Hodges and Ted Lumpkin came to speak at USC last week.

Jerry Hodges (Left) graduated in 1950 with a BS in Accounting. Ted Lumpkin (Right) became a Trojan in 1947 and later furthered his education by earning a master’s degree from USC in 1953.

The two Airmen were brought back to USC by a collaborative effort of the Black Alumni Association, Center for Black Cultural and Student Affairs, Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc., Kappa Delta Sigma chapter, the Tuskegee Airmen Scholarship Foundation, and the Veteran Resource Center. Interim President Wanda Austin briefly spoke at the event and praised their efforts by saying, “It is really phenomenal that our organizations on campus have chosen to honor them.”

The Tuskegee Airmen are individuals who truly deserve to be celebrated. The airmen faced a lot of adversity in the course of accomplishing their goals. They were denied many years the right to become pilots, but they capitalized on their education and training to become some of America’s most recognized and decorated heroes. Ted Lumpkin shared his own experience in becoming a pilot, saying, “you’d be sitting in a room like this and the Blacks would be in the back of the room, the Whites in the front of the room. I was surprised at that. I came from California to Tuskegee and having to sit in the back of [the room] was different to me. It was not anything that I enjoyed, but it was something that we had to do.” That certainly could not have been easy, but as Interim President Austin stated: “They survived all those years by never losing hope.”

In the words of Edward Grice, the executive director of the Tuskegee Airmen Scholarship Foundation, “Far too often the history of the Tuskegee Airmen escapes the younger generation.”  If you can only remember one thing about their expansive history, at least keep in mind another of the many already shared quotes from Interim President Austin, “The Tuskegee Airmen broke the military’s color barrier, but still had to endure segregation and in many cases, outright hatred.”

When asked, “What advice would you give to young African-Americans?”, both airmen had their own words to give, which I believe, ring true to anyone fighting adversity. 

From Ted Lumpkin, “Try to do the best you can each and every day…if you do the best you can, you then do not have to worry about what history or what posterity will say about whatever it is that you have done.” 

From Jerry Hodges, “You can compete and if you want to survive and go forward, you must compete.” Both men emphasized the importance of meeting the challenges of everyday struggles and refusing to back down. Leaving the event, I felt a huge wave of confidence that I could do exactly that.

If there weren’t already too many quotes in this post, I’m going to add one more from Interim President Austin, “Honoring their legacy and keeping it alive is a mission for each and every one of us.” Remembering the past allows us to better appreciate the future and move forward with the confidence that we’re making the right decisions. With the knowledge of the Tuskegee Airmen, everyone could do better to remember the importance of fighting against injustice and for what they believe in.

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