Page 77 - Appendix A

activities as far as the war was concerned. Because at seventeen I realized I was
coming up on the age of eighteen and that I would be drafted. So, therefore, I had

to make some decisions on what the heck was going to go on here. And with trying
to get into the Air Corps with the changing of the military laws and stuff like that
and getting Roosevelt to really commend that and go along with it. That was
something I was hoping for and when I realized and read in the newspaper that
they were allowing blacks into the cadet corps at that time. That was my main
objective because I did not want to be a truck driver, digging ditches, fixing
runways or stuff like that.

Ivan: So you were just trying to be a commissioned officer or you were trying to be also
a flying officer?

Bob: A flying officer, again commissioned.

Ivan: Okay.

Bob: And that was my endeavor and so as soon as I found out that this was going on I
ran over to New York airport and enlisted in the Air Corps as a reservist because I
wasn’t eighteen at the time. And then of course I went back to the high school.
We found out about all the things that we could do to get information about flying,

how flying is, how to fly an airplane and all this. So I went back to the school and
we did all of this and set up a little course and that was for everyone, the whites
and the blacks, and this aviation you know this is what you need to get into
aviation. So I took that course and when I took the exam to go into the cadet
program, I passed without any problems.

Ivan: You weren’t a beneficiary of CPTP?

Bob: No, so let me give you some background on the black cadet core (at Tuskegee Air
Base). Initially, the black cadet corps had fifteen cadets and the only people that

they had at the Air Base to instruct those fifteen were white instructors.

Ivan: Right.

Bob: Because they said blacks didn’t know how to fly and they didn’t know anything
about it. So they never really went out to check to find out if there were any blacks
and where they were and all that sort of stuff. But that came up when the CPT