Black men foil experiment meant to Îfailâ

By Claudia Hibbert-BeDan
The Metropolitan

Retired Air Force Col. Fitzroy Newsum knew it would take a lot of hard work to get into flight school. But he didnât know how hard it would be until his application to flight school was rejected three times.

He didnât understand why, but he found out after he received several  responses to letters he wrote after his third rejection. It was because Newsum is black, and in the 1940s, the military didnât believe blacks had any leadership quality, let alone the capacity to learn to fly a plane.

Newsum finally got his chance after the Army Air Corps decided to conduct an ăexperimentä called the Tuskegee Air Army Field, which was established in January 1941 to train black men to fly. Newsum was one of a group of black men known as the Tuskegee Airmen.

But it was an experiment that was meant to fail, Newsum, 79, told a group March 3 during a 2-hour lecture/slide show that spanned his childhood and military career.

ăWhen the program was established by President (Franklin) Roosevelt, it was labeled an experiment,ä Newsum said. ăThe people in Congress knew it was an experiment and the majority of them hoped that it would go away. Unfortunately for them, it didnât go away, thank goodness to a group of fairly gallant young people.ä
Newsum was born in Manhattan, N.Y., but grew up in Barbados.

He was taken aback when he came back to the states when he was 12 and was told he couldnât succeed at his goals before heâd even tried to reach them.

He was admitted to flight school in 1943, four years after he joined the service. He didnât fly in combat during World War II, but he went on to serve in the Korean War and the Vietnam conflict. He is also a member of the Metro Foundation, a group that solicits funds from businesses for scholarships and other Metro programs.

Newsumâs lecture included pictures of his family and provided a different view of the soldiers who fought in WWII, young, black men in brand new leather jackets, full of hope and ready to fight.

He also spoke of the white officers who helped train the 15,000 soldiers for various jobs and, in essence, jeopardized their military careers by being associated with a group that the military didnât think would amount to much.

One was a suave-looking Italian, who he called L.G.

ăIt was difficult for him because he knew as an officer he wouldnât go anywhere as far as rank was concerned because he was tied together with us who were supposed to be losers,ä Newsum said. ăGood olâ L.G.ä

Few people learn about this part of history, aside from what is depicted in the movies or what is squeezed into Black History Month, Newsum said.

But Newsum said they should know that the Tuskegee program was the one of the first to prove that black men, given the chance, could do anything.