Tuskegee Airmen statue at Palm Springs Air Museum. (Image: Kathryn Reed)

If some people had their way, Chauncey Spencer never would have been a pilot. They said no Black person was smart enough.

The they were white people. And they were wrong.

Chauncey Spencer III, his son, on Feb. 22 gave a talk at the Palm Springs Air Museum about the elder Spencer’s role in getting Black men to be military pilots and the Tuskegee Airmen.

Spencer touched on the latest discriminatory actions coming out of Washington, where with a stroke of a pen the president removed training videos of the Tuskegee Airmen from the Air Force’s website. Bipartisan uproar helped get them reinstated.

“Segregation is part of our history. We can’t forget,” Spencer said. “White Americans made us separate.”

Before the Air Force would allow Black people to be pilots they had to prove they could fly. Spencer was integral in making that happen.

Chauncey Spencer III talks Feb. 22 in Palm Springs about the early days of Black military pilots. (Image: Kathryn Reed)

“At 11, he fell in love with flying, but after graduating from college, no aviation school in Virginia would admit him because of his color. Spencer moved to Chicago in 1934 and joined a group of African American aviators organizing the National Airmen Association of America,” a flyer about the talk says. “He worked for $16 a week as  kitchen helper and paid $11 an hour for flying lessons.”

It goes on to say, “In May 1939, he and fellow aviator Dale Lawrence White, also an NAAA member, flew a rented Lincoln-Paige biplane with only two flight instruments on a 10-city tour that started in Chicago and ended in Washington., D.C. Realizing that war in Europe was imminent, they demonstrated the aviation abilities of Negroes. They lobbied Congress to include people of color in the Civilian Pilot Training Program for the Army Air Corps. Their flight drew national attention and proved that African Americans could fly an airplane, contrary to the beliefs and opinions of most Army Air Corps and government leaders.”

The government in 1941 created a segregated air base in Tuskegee, Ala., where the Black airmen trained. This is why the Black unit is still known today as the Tuskegee Airmen. About 1,000 pilots were trained there from 1941-46.

Spencer was not allowed to be a combat pilot because he was 30; the age limit then was 27.

“The Tuskegee Airmen flew more than 15,000 sorties between May 1943 and June 1945. Bomber crews often requested to be escorted by these ‘Red Tails,’ a nicknamed acquired from the painted tails of Tuskegee fighter planes, which were a distinctive deep red,” the National World War II website says. “Sixty-six Tuskegee Airmen died in combat. They had one of the lowest loss records of any escort fighter group.”

It was after World War II, in 1948, that the military became desegregated.

Outside the Palm Springs Air Museum are four life-size bronze statues of Tuskegee Airmen, which were erected in May 2021.