Black Wings: Exhibit shares stories about pilots who defied status quo

Many folks have heard of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first wing of black military pilots who flew to success in World War II. But Bessie Coleman? Benjamin O. Davis Jr.? Even Lt. Jeanine McIntosh-Menze? Maybe not.

That’s why a show such as “Black Wings,” a Smithsonian exhibit at the Washington State History Museum, is so important. It tells the stories of black pilots who were not only brave enough to do what they did, but to do it in the face of established disapproval and disbelief.

It’s a powerful show if you take the time to read the stories. But it’s not a touchy-feely show, not even a particularly visual one despite the blown-up historical photographs plastered over the screen panels that divide it into walk-through historical lanes. It’s a show children should see, but it takes a lot of reading to get the impact.

With an excerpt from William Powell’s 1935 silent film “Unemployment, the Negro and Aviator,” whose goal was to “fight racial segregation and fill the sky with black wings,” the exhibit begins with the Wright Brothers in 1903. But they’re just the kickoff to the whole story. Not much is known about early black aviators. The Smithsonian has a few photographs and fewer details.

What is known is how they defied dominant white notions that held blacks weren’t up to the task of piloting – and defied it gloriously. The first detailed profile in the show is of Bessie Coleman, who was born in 1892 into a big, poor Texas family. She became the first black woman to get her pilot’s license. Joining the elite group of demonstration pilots or “barnstormers,” she captured national media attention as a stunt pilot before flipping her plane and falling to her death at age 24. The show’s panels do a good job of walking you through Coleman’s contemporaries, giving the flavor of the time with posters advertising a “Colored Air Circus” and “Five Blackbirds,” along with newspaper clippings and portraits of smiling pilots.

There also is an indication of what these early pilots had to fight. A memo from the Army War College Commandant in 1925 explains just “why Negros can’t fly,” seeing as how they were “by nature subservient” and “mentally inferior.” There’s no mention of how many determined black pilots there were in the 1920s. By the 1940s, things had changed. Despite Army segregation (at enormous cost), the Tuskegee Airmen were established to fight in World War II. “Black Wings” offers plenty of photos of their Alabama training school, along with individuals such as Benjamin O. Davis, a West Point graduate and leader of the first all-black fighting squadron, the 99th.

The exhibit isn’t all wall photographs. A couple of Lucite boxes hold historic flying helmets, from the leather and goggles of the 1920s to the space-age white of the 1960s. There’s a model of a P-51 Mustang, flown by the Tuskegee Airmen, plus flight instruments, charts and uniform patches. Best of all – especially from the kids’ point of view – is a computer game simulating a WWII flight mission, in which you’re the commander and screen action freezes while you make important decisions (ditch the fuel to maneuver, or leave enough to make it home). The addition of several screens would beef up interest for younger folks.

Exhibition panels then take you through Truman’s action to end military segregation in 1948, through the Korean and Vietnam wars, past profiles such as Daniel “Chappie” James Jr., a flight leader in three wars and the first black four-star general.

The inequalities extend into space travel. By the last panel, you’re reading about the first women and minorities to be accepted into NASA training in the 1970s, about the first shuttle mission with an black on board in 1983 (Dr. Bernard Harris, who’ll speak at the museum’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day events).

And there are disturbing “firsts” running into this century: Lt. Jeanine McIntosh-Menze, the first black woman pilot in the Coast Guard – 2005; Lt. La’Shonda Holmes, the first black woman helicopter pilot in the Coast Guard – 2010.

As museum curator Redmond Barnett puts it, “this is not a story that ended in triumph in 1960.”

Which begs the whole question of why. Why are we seeing blacks (especially women) breaking into only various military niches? What other “firsts” are yet to happen?

These are questions the exhibit doesn’t answer or even directly raise, and neither does the museum. Instead, it’s left to viewers to ponder the fact that black pilots are still, nearly 100 years after Bessie Coleman, defying the status quo.

Rosemary Ponnekanti: 253-597-8568, rosemary.ponnekanti@thenewstribune.com