McKinley: America Must Preserve Tuskegee Airmen’s Legacy

WASHINGTON, Aug. 8, 2011 — As the accom­plish­ments of the World War II-era Tuskegee Air­men fade into U.S. his­to­ry, a grate­ful nation must work to keep their lega­cy alive, the chief of the Nation­al Guard Bureau said at the 40th annu­al Tuskegee Air­men con­ven­tion.

“The real­i­ty of human behav­ior is that the fur­ther in time we get from an event in his­to­ry, the fur­ther it slips from our mem­o­ry,” Air Force Gen. Craig R. McKin­ley said Aug. 5 at the gath­er­ing of the group named for the nation’s first African-Amer­i­can fight­er pilots at Nation­al Har­bor, Md. “I don’t want to see this hap­pen to the lega­cy of the Tuskegee Airmen.” 

The mil­i­tary made a tan­gi­ble step in pre­serv­ing the unit’s her­itage when in 2007 the 187th Fight­er Wing of the Alaba­ma Air Nation­al Guard deac­ti­vat­ed its 160th Fight­er Squadron and reac­ti­vat­ed it as the 100th Fight­er Squadron in hon­or of the Tuskegee Air­men, said McKin­ley, who was direc­tor of the Air Nation­al Guard at the time. But, there is more the mil­i­tary and the nation can do to pre­serve and repli­cate their lega­cy, he said. 

McKin­ley spoke of the airmen’s com­mit­ment to ser­vice, not­ing that it came dur­ing a time of Jim Crow seg­re­ga­tion laws when “this coun­try was telling African-Amer­i­cans they could­n’t stay in the same hotels as white peo­ple, they could­n’t attend the same schools as white peo­ple, and in some cas­es, they could­n’t even enter a build­ing through the same door as white people. 

“Why then would the Tuskegee Air­men in the 1940s choose to fight for our coun­try?” the gen­er­al asked. “I’ll bet that if you asked the orig­i­nal Tuskegee Air­men … a com­mon answer would be com­mit­ment to ser­vice and pre­serv­ing our nation for the next gen­er­a­tion to make it better.” 

All ser­vice mem­bers can car­ry on the lega­cy of the Tuskegee Air­men by striv­ing for excel­lence, McKin­ley said. He not­ed the accom­plish­ments of the air­men, which include more than 16,000 com­bat sor­ties with 115 Ger­man air­craft destroyed in the air and anoth­er 150 on the ground, and 950 Ger­man vehi­cles destroyed. Their com­men­da­tions include three Dis­tin­guished Unit Cita­tions, about 150 Dis­tin­guished Fly­ing Cross­es, at least one Sil­ver Star, 14 Bronze Stars, 748 Air Medals and eight Pur­ple Hearts. 

“If you want an exam­ple of excel­lence, there it is,” McKin­ley said to applause. 

The mil­i­tary can do more to car­ry on the Tuskegee Airmen’s lega­cy, he said, by con­duct­ing out­reach to make more young peo­ple eli­gi­ble for recruit­ment. Pen­ta­gon sta­tis­tics show that three out of four Amer­i­cans ages 17 through 24, and more often minori­ties, can­not be recruit­ed due to inad­e­quate edu­ca­tion, health prob­lems or crim­i­nal his­to­ry, he said. 

The ser­vices also must con­tin­ue with efforts to pro­mote diver­si­ty as a core val­ue, mak­ing its lead­er­ship as diverse as Amer­i­ca, and hold senior offi­cers account­able for progress, McKin­ley said. 

Also, the gen­er­al said, the nation needs to prime its young peo­ple to main­tain U.S. supe­ri­or­i­ty in sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy, not­ing increased com­pe­ti­tion from Chi­na, Rus­sia, Cana­da and Brazil in avi­a­tion and aerospace. 

“We have to ask our­selves, who is going to design America’s unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cle tech­nol­o­gy of the future?” he said. “Who will build the next stealth bomber? Who will go to Mars?” 

With few­er and few­er Amer­i­cans hav­ing a fam­i­ly mem­ber who served in the mil­i­tary, McKin­ley said, ser­vice mem­bers and vet­er­ans must serve as the exam­ple. And, for those who can­not serve in the mil­i­tary, he encour­aged oth­er forms of ser­vice, such as the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps. 

“Those of us who have influ­ence over the younger gen­er­a­tion of Amer­i­cans can encour­age them to con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Amer­i­can avi­a­tion and to fol­low the Tuskegee Airmen’s exam­ple of ser­vice to our nation above self,” he said. “For 70 years, the Tuskegee Air­men have right­ful­ly been hailed as America’s heroes. Through the actions we take start­ing today, we can ensure that their lega­cy lives — then, now and in the future.” 

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs) 

Team GlobDef

Seit 2001 ist GlobalDefence.net im Internet unterwegs, um mit eigenen Analysen, interessanten Kooperationen und umfassenden Informationen für einen spannenden Überblick der Weltlage zu sorgen. GlobalDefence.net war dabei die erste deutschsprachige Internetseite, die mit dem Schwerpunkt Sicherheitspolitik außerhalb von Hochschulen oder Instituten aufgetreten ist.

Alle Beiträge ansehen von Team GlobDef →