Heroic Legacies: The Tuskegee Airmen & George Lucas

Sometimes you “choose your battles.” You make a conscious decision “this is the hill I am going to die on.”

You know those metaphors. They reflect a moment of decision making and action.

Sometimes the choice is life changing and then again, sometimes there is no choice.

Such was the case in World War II of then-E-6 Steward First Class Carl Clark who served in the Navy. Clark had an experience of discrimination -- and of ultimate vindication -- similar to that of the better-known Tuskegee Airmen.

This week  as we transition from celebrating Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, the nation is saluting Tuskegee Airmen for their acts of valor and bravery.  

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy – Martin Luther King, Jr.

These men fought in a war and fought for the freedom of a country in which they themselves were not free. Imagine that! Talk about choosing your battles, figuratively and literally. They chose the better part of valor and a course of action for the betterment of us all.

Their stories have been buried, silenced or seldom told.

But this week, these World War II heroes are subject of news broadcasts, talk shows, entertainment reviews and even commercials.

When Japanese pilots bombed the USS Aaron Ward, Mr. Clark with broken bones of his own pulled men to safety and single-handedly operated fire suppression equipment to put out a fire that would have blown up the ship.

Others were awarded medals for their part in that battle, but Mr. Clark was not – because he is black.

This week, at age 95, the Menlo Park resident received the long overdue honor .

On Tuesday, January 17, navy hero Carl Clark received the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal with the Combat Distinguished Device at Moffett Field.

What amounts to just a chapter in the heroic epic of the Tuskegee Airmen will be shown on the commercial big screen starting this weekend. The heralded film Red Tails will open in movie theaters.

What makes the story so newsworthy at this point and time is the making of the film itself. It took a rich man like George Lucas to call attention to the contributions of so many. I applaud him for taking the aforementioned proverbial hill.

I was fortunate to attend a pre-release of the movie.  I highly recommend a trip to the theater to view it. And even though the movie tells the story of a racist past, according to George Lucas, it is the racist present that has taken him more than 20 years for him to bring the film to the marketplace. Lucas told TV host Jon Stewart that he could not find a distributor for the film because it had an all-black cast.

The Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) had trained African American men to be pilots – The Tuskegee Airmen -- as a result there was a cadre of black men wanting to fly and fight for the United States in World War II.

In the segregated military there were no African American pilots. So an “experiment” was established to see if black men were capable of being military pilots. And capable they were. 

They were so capable that one of these African American pilots flew First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and in battle they were so victorious that many of the white bomber squadrons requested the Tuskegee Airmen fighter pilots to be their escorts, as opposed to their white counterparts.  (These few sentences very much oversimplify the story, and the Wiki link only gives highlights. Books about them are available for good winter reading.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tuskegee_Airmen

Fortunately, there are still Tuskegee Airmen alive, and Mr. Clark is able-bodied so we can get first-person account of their heroism. To paraphrase Dr. King, “if you don’t have something that you will die for, then what is worth living for.” Their lives enriched ours.  As a black woman and as an American, I am feeling really proud this week about their service and the telling of their stories -- and it isn’t even February*.

(*If that is lost on you, February is Black History Month)