Page 75 - Appendix A

Lt Col Robert Ashby, Original Tuskegee Airman

Ivan: One of the things I want to say right up front Bob is that I'm honored that you
would take the time…There's such a wealth of knowledge in what you have, that
anything you say is valuable to us and the generations that have followed. So, I
have the questions, but they are by no means intended to limit you from anything
that you want to say. You read the book...

Bob: Yeah oh yeah,

Ivan: The first book was more of an empirical book, it had a couple of premises, and
then I set out to with data and examples and tables to try and prove those

premises. This book is a little bit different, I'm still kind of shooting at the same
target, but my goal is to fill this book up with the stories of others from your
generation to the recent graduates of pilot training and to see if any themes
emerge... How did your pilot training environment compare to your high school,
college and home environment, I mean did you go to an integrated school, did you
go to an all-black high school, college?

Bob: Yeah, the school was integrated, I grew up in Jersey City, New Jersey. So the entire
country was integrated except for that small section in the south-east down in our

country. And the main thing about people going into the Service then, World War
II, was that this is an integrated country. Why did they come up with this scenario
that “oh we have to segregate these blacks coming into the military now.” And
keep them separate from us. The country was not segregated per say, only that
small section of the country. There was you know, discrimination and people
probably in other parts of the country who had different ideas but at least the laws
of the particular states and so forth was not in their favor, so they could not go
out and openly discriminate against people. Now in the south-east, there are of
course, well they can go into, the laws were there. And I don’t know whether or
not you knew this or not but Tuskegee, the Tuskegee Army Air Base originally was

segregated, I don’t know whether you knew that?

Ivan: No, I didn’t. I knew the officer’s club was segregated.

Bob: The entire Tuskegee Air Base was segregated, at that time you had to have a white
commander of a black base, so therefore, the white commander of the base and
the white instructors were there, they segregated themselves and they publicly