Happy Veterans Day! Thank you to each and every veteran who reads this page and gratitude to those who served who are no longer with us. In this photo, Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Harriet Ida Pickens (left) and Ensign Frances Wills, the Navy’s first African-American “WAVES” officers, are shown after graduating from the Naval Reserve Midshipmen’s School (WR) at Northampton, Massachusetts, in December 1944. Photo: Official U.S. Navy Photograph, National Archives.
Two sailors from the the USS Mason (DE-529), the first US Navy ship to have a predominantly African-American crew on March 20, 1944. Photo: Corbis
Willa Brown Chappell was a pioneering aviator who co-founded the National Airmen’s Association of America, an organization whose mission was to get African Americans into the United States Air Force. Inspired by Bessie Coleman, Chappell (then known as Willa Beatrice Brown) started taking flying lessons in 1934 at Chicago’s Aeronautical University. She earned her pilot’s license in 1937, making her the first African-American woman to be licensed to fly in the United States. In 1940, she and her first husband, Lieutenant Cornelius R. Coffey started the Coffey School of Aeronautics, where some of the approximately 200 pilots who trained there eventually became “Tuskegee Airmen.” Born in Glasgow, Kentucky on January 22, 1906, she died on July 18, 1992 at the age of 86.
Lena Horne with cadets at the Tuskegee Airbase in Tuskegee, Alabama in 1945.
Col. Benjamin O. Davis and Edward C. Gleed in Ramitelli, Italy in March 1945. Col. Davis was the Commanding Officer of the 332nd Fighter Group - the Tuskegee Airmen. Mr. Gleed was Group Operations Officer. P-5/D, “Creamer’s Dream,” is in the background. Photo by Toni Frissell.
Hugh Mulzac, the first African-American captain in the U.S. Navy to command an integrated crew during World War II, with his family at a 1940s dinner in his honor. Paul Robeson spoke and Hazel Scott performed during the evening.
Hugh Mulzac, the first African-American captain in the U.S. Navy to command an integrated crew during World War II, with his family at a 1940s dinner in his honor. Paul Robeson spoke and Hazel Scott performed during the evening.
