Page 12 - Appendix A

had a talk with a few of them one-on-one and his rank actually mattered. If he wasn't there, I
WOULD NOT be a pilot in the USAF. Huge shout out to Maj Leon Butler.

In your opinion was being black a benefit or detriment during training? Please explain.

Detriment. I could write my own book on this experience. To sum it all up: Pilot training is
challenging enough, and when you add on the racism piece to it, you get the added stand-up EP
test, you get IP's who fail you for items your white counterparts don't, IPs who won't take you
cross country, less instruction, you automatically get ranked LAST in flight commander ranking
regardless of officership qualities (Flight commander ranking is 20% of your overall ranking).
Being a Distinguished Graduate out of ROTC, how can one justify falling last in a class of 40
some 8 months later? And then there are your fellow students, many of which had never had a
black person in their class from high school through college. Now they are thrust into this

competitive environment with a person that they see as lesser than them. Many of them
questioned how we could even have made it into UPT (Affirmative Action). The better I did as a
student, the worst I was treated by most IPs and classmates.

What was your assigned aircraft out of UPT? Primary MDS?
T-38 First Assignment Instructor Pilot. F-15C

In which flight program(s) did you participate prior to pilot training?
USAFA Soaring