Banquet at Greenwood Honors black Pilots of WWII

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By J. Patrick Coolican
Seattle Times Eastside bureau
Monday, February 03, 2003

KEN LAMBERT / THE SEATTLE TIMES Abby Hodson, 8, checks out a tiny plane as former Tuskegee Airman Richard Macon, left, and Greenwood Elementary principal Robert Radford listen to U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott.

Richard Macon risked his life flying a P-40 during World War II to free Europe from the scourge of fascism, a sacrifice all the more meaningful given the freedoms he was denied at home as an African-American.

Macon is one of the Tuskegee Airmen, the all-black squadron of World War II fliers, and was one of the honored guests last night at a Greenwood Elementary School banquet that celebrated both Black History Month and the centennial of powered flight.

Trained at Tuskegee Army Airfield in Tuskegee, Ala., the fliers distinguished themselves escorting Allied bombers over central and southern Europe, not losing a single bomber from June 1944 to April 1945.

The Jim Crow laws that enforced segregation in places such as Tuskegee, and the more subtle discrimination everywhere else, only gave Macon more reason to fly, he said. His skill and bravery would show the country, he reasoned, that it was time to end discrimination and segregation.

"The people who ran the country needed to learn a great deal," he said. "I had compassion for their ignorance, and I wanted to help save the country."

Mel Streeter was one of about 300 people at last night's banquet. As he waited patiently for an autograph from Macon, he recalled listening to World War II radio reports from Europe when he was in junior high school. He said the pilots were as revered by young African Americans like himself as professional athletes are today. Although a football injury prevented him from becoming a pilot, Streeter served in the Army in the decade after President Truman integrated the military with an executive order in 1948.

Local real-estate agents didn't express much gratitude to Streeter for serving, with 25 of them telling him they had no housing for him and his family, he said.

"Here you are protecting your country, and you had to put up with this?" Streeter later became an architect and put four children through college. "Over all these obstructions, our family has learned to persevere," he said.

Vivid memories of discrimination spurred Greenwood Elementary principal Robert Radford to turn the school into an aviation academy of sorts. A two-room museum of flight features flight simulators and model planes, and in June a group of students will travel to Boeing Field, where they'll fly a Cessna 172.

Despite Radford's college degree and flight experience, the Air Force, Navy and commercial airlines rejected him in the 1950s because he was black, he said.

"Because I was denied those opportunities and all the passion I have for aviation," he said, "I want to make the boys and girls aware of the opportunities they have."

Ashley Dunlap, a senior at Ingraham High School, hopes to serve as a symbol of the military's progress. She plans on joining the Air Force after graduation. Her senior project, a report on the Tuskegee Airmen, was on display at the banquet next to a reproduction of Truman's executive order. Her research revealed the racism the fliers faced as well as their impressive flying record, she said.

As she talked, banquet organizers were arranging seven portraits of the seven space-shuttle Columbia astronauts on the wall.

J. Patrick Coolican: 206-464-3315.