16977: BHM 2025—US Department Of Defense.

While President Donald J. Trump issued a proclamation recognizing February 2025 as National Black History Month, the US Department of Defense issued a memo (depicted above) bombing BHM celebrations—which led to the Air Force temporarily removing videos featuring the Tuskegee Airmen from basic military training courses.

 

The cultural cluelessness is indefensible.

 

Pentagon agency pauses celebrations for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Black History Month and more

 

By Tara Copp

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Defense Department’s intelligence agency has paused observances of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Pride Month, Holocaust Days of Remembrance and other cultural or historical annual events in response to President Donald Trump’s ban on diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the federal workplace.

 

The instructions were published Tuesday in a Defense Intelligence Agency memo obtained by The Associated Press and affect 11 annual events, including Black History Month, which begins Saturday, and National Hispanic Heritage Month.

 

The memo’s authenticity was confirmed by a U.S. official who said the pause was initiated by the DIA and appears not to be policy across the Defense Department. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

 

“We are receiving questions across the workforce on the way forward,” the memo said. “DIA will pause all activities and events related to Agency Special Emphasis Programs effective immediately and until further notice.”

 

It also noted a pause on “special observances” hosted throughout the year. While Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth were included, the memo said the change would not affect those national holidays.

 

The contents of the memo were first reported by independent journalist Ken Klippenstein and posted to X.

 

Federal agencies have struggled to interpret Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order ending DEI programs across the government and have taken a broad approach due to lack of clearer guidance from the White House on how to comply.

 

On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed staff to create a DEI task force to ensure no DEI programs remain in the Pentagon.

 

“We’re not joking around,” Hegseth said in an interview Wednesday with Fox News. “There’s no changing of names or softly manipulating something. DEI is gone.”

 

In response to a query from the AP about the memo, the DIA said late Wednesday it “is working with the Department of Defense to fully implement all executive orders and administration guidance in a timely manner. As we receive additional guidance, we will continue to update our internal guidance.”

 

The other annual events listed in the DIA memo are Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, National American Indian Heritage Month, National Disability Employment Awareness Month, Women’s Equality Day and Women’s History Month.

 

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked at a briefing Tuesday whether Black History Month would cease to be celebrated.

 

“As far as I know, this White House certainly still intends to celebrate, and we will continue to celebrate American history and the contributions that all Americans, regardless of race, religion or creed, have made to our great country,” she said.

 

The changes in holiday observances in some ways resemble the Air Force’s quick elimination of DEI coursework in its basic military training, which temporarily resulted in the service removing videos on the Tuskegee Airmen and World War II female pilots that had been in those courses. After a brief uproar, the Air Force said the history of both groups would continue to be taught.

16268: Happy Memorial Day.

 

15682: Brigadier General Charles McGee (1919-2022).

 

From CNN…

 

Tuskegee Airman Brig. Gen. Charles McGee dies at 102

 

By Sarah Fortinsky and Barbara Starr, CNN

 

(CNN) Brig. Gen. Charles McGee, one of the last surviving Tuskegee Airmen, died Sunday morning in his sleep, according to a family spokesman. He was 102.

 

“McGee was a living legend known for his kind-hearted, and humble nature, who saw positivity at every turn,” the family said in the statement. “He spent the last half century inspiring future generations to pursue careers in aviation, but equally important, he encouraged others to be the best they could be, to follow their dreams, and to persevere through all challenges.”

 

Over the course of his historic career, McGee successfully completed 409 air combat missions across three wars, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, serving a total of 30 years of active service. McGee has received numerous accolades throughout his career, including the Congressional Gold Medal in 2007 and the National Business Aviation Association's Meritorious Service to Aviation Award in 2012. He was enshrined into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 2011.

 

“Today, we lost an American hero. Charles McGee, Brigadier General and one of the last surviving Tuskegee Airman, passed at the age of 102. While I am saddened by his loss, I’m also incredibly grateful for his sacrifice, his legacy, and his character. Rest in peace, General,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in a tweet remembering McGee.

 

McGee is survived by three children, 10 grandchildren, 14 great grandchildren, and one great-great grandchild.

 

“As the nation mourns, the family asks that we remember the importance and significance of the legacy he left, all of his fellow Tuskegee Airmen, and everyone who played a role in the support and protection of American democracy,” the family’s statement read.

 

The Tuskegee Airmen were the first Black military aviators in the US service corps.

 

14008: BHM 2018—Regions.

Regions recycles its BHM message—although this year, the scholarship essay contest is being more clearly communicated and promoted. Don’t expect an entry from the former Regions Senior VP who probably isn’t celebrating BHM anyways.

13562: BHM 2017—Regions.

Regions flies through Black History Month by saluting Tuskegee Airmen and launching scholarships.

10144: The Root Roots For Black War Heroes.

The Root presents Ten Places Honoring Black War Heroes.

9771: BHM 2012—Wells Fargo.

Wells Fargo jumps on the Tuskegee Airmen bandwagon.

9760: BHM 2012—Walmart.

Walmart flies through Black History Month with Red Tails. But why only salute the Tuskegee Airmen for their contribution to Black History? What about American History?

9677: Red Tails At White House.

From USA TODAY…

White House showing ‘Red Tails’ movie about airmen

WASHINGTON (AP) – It’s a night at the movies for President Obama and the first lady — and they won’t have to leave the White House.

The Obamas will be hosting Tuskegee Airmen along with cast and crew members of the movie Red Tails, about the legendary African-American fighter pilots during World War II.

Screening of the military drama will cap a day in which the president is scheduled to hold private meetings with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Obama will also take time out to attend a campaign event at the Jefferson Hotel in Washington.

9673: George Lucas Goes To The Dark Side.

From The Huffington Post…

George Lucas: Hollywood Didn’t Want To Fund ‘Red Tails’ Because Of Its Black Cast

In an appearance on The Daily Show last night, George Lucas said that he had trouble getting funding for his new movie, “Red Tails,” because of its black cast.

“This has been held up for release since 1942 since it was shot, I’ve been trying to get released ever since,” Lucas told Jon Stewart. “It’s because it’s an all-black movie. There’s no major white roles in it at all...I showed it to all of them and they said no. We don’t know how to market a movie like this.”

“Red Tails,” which stars Cuba Gooding, Jr., and Terrence Howard, is based on the Tuskegee Airmen, the group of pioneering black pilots who fought in the United States’ segregated armed forces during World War II. The movie is directed by Anthony Hemingway, the rare black director getting a chance to direct a big-budget feature.

Last week, Lucas told USA Today that he was worried that if Red Tails was a failure, it could have negative repercussions for black filmmakers. “I realize that by accident I’ve now put the black film community at risk [with Red Tails, whose $58 million budget far exceeds typical all-black productions],” he said. “I’m saying, if this doesn’t work, there’s a good chance you’ll stay where you are for quite a while. It’ll be harder for you guys to break out of that [lower-budget] mold. But if I can break through with this movie, then hopefully there will be someone else out there saying let’s make a prequel and sequel, and soon you have more Tyler Perrys out there.”

7692: Old War Stories.

From The Chicago Sun-Times…

Great day for old war stories
Tuskegee Airman tells of crashing behind enemy lines in WWII

By Maudlyne Ihejirika, Staff Reporter

The 90-year-old South Side war veteran still vividly recalls the crash landing as if it were yesterday.

It was during World War II when Welton Taylor, a liaison pilot and member of the famed Tuskegee Airmen, America’s first black military air squad, was serving in the Pacific Theater of Operations, flying L-4 and L-5 aircraft with the 93rd Infantry Division.

Taylor saw combat on the Solomon Islands, New Guinea and the Philippines.

On a non-combat mission, delivering mail to the troops, his plane crashed behind Japanese lines.

“I was criminally attacked by a Japanese mountain 33 miles into Japanese territory, while flying a mission of mercy for my troops,” said Taylor, who later was to become a world-renowned scientist and educator. In 1985, the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta named a bacterium, Enterobacter taylorae, after him and a British colleague.

“I was carrying their mail, and I managed to deliver all my mail and was on my way home when I saw this horrible storm building up,” he said.

“I was trying to climb over the last of the mountains when I hit the mountain. But instead of hitting on my nose, which would have exploded the gas tank on my lap, I slid down a grassy slope, losing parts of the plane as I crashed.

“I had an observer in the plane with me. We both survived,” he recounts. “I was able to walk away with only my kneecaps showing, and so I pulled my skin up over my kneecaps, sprinkled some sulfa on it and two band-aids, and kept moving. I took the compass out of the plane, because south of the equator, you cannot walk in a straight line in a forest or jungle.

“We walked for two days, and made it past two Japanese camps. On the second day, we were rescued by our troops on the beach.”

Taylor, a descendant of President Zachary Taylor, is one of several members of the 332nd Fighter Group, commonly known as the Tuskegee Airmen, living in the Chicago area.

Huge WWII success
Members of the Chicago chapter, who will be marching in the annual Memorial Day Parade downtown today, were among the 450 fighter pilots who were trained at an air base in Tuskegee, Ala., to fly and maintain combat aircraft as a segregated unit. They broke barriers for African Americans.

“We’ll have our own float, with a large model of the P51 airplane, which is what the Tuskegee Airmen flew in combat in Italy,” Taylor said proudly.

The unit, which became one of the most successful flying squadrons in U.S. military history, protecting Allied bombers over some 200 escort missions in Europe, never lost one bomber under their protection to enemy fighters. They destroyed or damaged more than 400 German aircraft and more than 1,000 targets.

But despite their distinguished record, they faced discrimination back home when they returned and were never recognized until much later. In 2007, President George W. Bush collectively awarded some 300 members and their widows the Congressional Gold Medal.

“It was 61 years late. But I’m glad I stuck around and waited for it,” said the retired bacteriologist.

“Many of us are gone now. Another died yesterday at age 90, so I don’t think we’ll have as many on the float as in the past, but it’s been an unbelievable ride.”

7588: WWII Vets Share Their Stories.

From The Times-Picayune…

Veterans Speak Out After Decades of Silence

By Sarah Carr, The Times-Picayune

Decades after the war was won, the two veterans battled historical ignorance, racial exclusion and the numbing power of silence.

World War II veterans Charles Norman Shay and William Holloman challenged those forces during a moving panel discussion Saturday in New Orleans on the final day of the National World War II Museum’s latest international conference on the conflict.

The two men, one an American Indian and the other African-American, described their wartime and life experiences in a session titled “People of Color in a White Man’s Army.”

Shay, a former combat medic who is now an elder in Maine’s Penobscot tribe, said he returned home to a country that would not let him vote and seemed oblivious to the fact that thousands of American Indians had served their country. He did not speak of his experiences in World War II for 60 years.

Holloman, a Tuskegee Airman and one of the first black pilots to serve in the Army Air Forces, fought for the right to fight for his country, as he put it.

Prisoner of war
Shay grew up during the Depression on the Penobscot reservation in Maine. When the war came, many of his peers — and all three of his brothers — served, some because of patriotism, others because of poverty. He trained to become a combat medic in England, not fully understanding the dangers of the job.

He was among the first Americans to wade ashore on D-Day, and he went on to fight throughout Europe, including at the Battle of the Bulge. German forces captured Shay in 1945, just weeks before the Allied victory. When freed, he somehow found a ship bound for Boston, where he pleasantly surprised his mother, a Navy shipyard worker whose last news of her son had been that he was missing in action.

“I do not remember much of what I saw or experienced,” said Shay who, like Holloman, is now in his mid-80s. He never spoke of the war with his fellow tribesmen or even his three brothers.

“Certainly, no one asked us to make a record of our experiences. So we just forgot,” he said. “And the country forgot as well.”

The forgetting stopped three years ago. Shay grew weary of the exclusion of Indians from the narrative of World War II — including the 60th anniversary celebrations of D-Day and a book on Maine veterans. He wondered: “Is it racism? Or is it ignorance?”

“In this last season of my life, I realized I have an obligation to educate the American public about our contributions and sacrifices for American freedom,” he said.

Entering the war late
Holloman, a native of St. Louis, was 17 when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941. He immediately tried to enlist. “They told me to go home until I grew up,” he said.

Holloman entered the war late, not long after Congress forced the Army Air Forces to form an all-black combat unit. In his group of 22 pilots, the average age was 20. “We thought there was nothing like us, and that when Adolf Hitler heard about us, he quit,” Holloman said of the war’s last days.

As some of the U.S. military’s first African-American pilots, the young men also felt intense pressure to perform. “We were very careful of our conduct,” Holloman said. “We were brainwashed to the point of not making mistakes.”

Holloman went on to serve as the first black helicopter pilot in the Air Force, and to fly in Korea and later in Vietnam.

He, too, would later encounter histories, books and popular opinion that ignored or twisted the role minorities played in fighting the war.

“Historians, I believe, write history for themselves,” he said, adding that “this country was built on the backs of the Native Americans and black slaves.”

But Shay and Holloman said they encountered little to no discrimination while in the military. When traveling as a captain in the late 1940s, “people treated me like I was white because I was a captain,” Holloman said.

One woman asked him: “Captain, someone told me that you are colored. Are you colored?”

And once Shay decided to speak out about his experiences, he rediscovered an unspoken understanding with his fellow veterans. “There is a unique feeling of shared history,” he said. “We did not need to exchange stories. We know more than words could ever express.”

7246: Tuskegee Airman On The Air.

From The Chicago Sun-Times…

Tuskegee Airman lands on the South Side
WWII | Shelby Westbrook’s famed unit will be featured in a 5-part History Channel series starting Sunday night

By Stefano Esposito, Staff Reporter

Shelby Westbrook—a decorated fighter pilot who flew 60 missions over Europe during World War II—went to get a passport the other day. He was turned down for lack of the proper paperwork.

As the 87-year-old South Sider tells it, the “young man” at the post office said Westbrook’s 1945 military papers weren’t proof he’s a U.S. citizen.

Westbrook isn’t just an American citizen. He was part of the famed African-American unit, the Tuskegee Airmen. And the small part he played in history is about to be told in the History Channel’s five-night series “WWII in HD,” which airs Sunday through Thursday.

Westbrook—who grew up in Arkansas and Ohio but has lived in Chicago since the war—is one of 12 Americans featured in the series, which tells the story of the war through their eyes.

He flew P-51 Mustang fighters out of Italy. On one mission, he was forced to belly-land his fighter in a Croatian field after being hit by enemy fire while returning to Italy from a bombing mission over Germany.

“It was just like taking a sled ride,” Westbrook recalled in an interview.

He walked away from the destroyed airplane and later encountered soldiers loyal to Yugoslavian resistance leader Marshal Tito who handed him over to British intelligence officers including Randolph Churchill, the only son of Winston Churchill, and writer Evelyn Waugh.

The soldiers couldn’t possibly have mistaken him for the enemy, Westbrook said: “They knew there were no black Germans.”

Some of his missions took him to the 2,500-year-old Parthenon.

“It was impressive, but my wingman and I used it as protection from anti-aircraft fire,” he said. “The Parthenon sits on a plateau, and right beside that was an airfield. We strafed that airfield two or three times to slow the German evacuation out of Greece.”

Six decades later, Westbrook seems underwhelmed about his inclusion in a TV documentary that the History Channel boasts will show the war “as it has never been seen before.” For one thing, Westbrook isn’t thrilled at the choice of rap star/Hollywood actor LL Cool J to narrate his story. Scott Reda, one of the series’ producers, said the hope is to attract a younger demographic.

“I disapproved of that because I don’t like rap—I like good American jazz music,” Westbrook said.

6865: Catch A Late Flight For Tuskegee Airmen.

From The Los Angeles Times…

L.A. museum honors the Tuskegee Airmen

A long-overdue tribute to pioneering black military pilots features photographs, uniforms and documentaries on the historic WWII unit. It runs at the California African American Museum through Nov. 1.

By Corina Knoll

Flight was always on his mind.

As he plowed soybean fields and chopped cotton in his tiny hometown of Heth, Ark., Jerry Hodges passed the time by imagining himself streaking across the sky in the cockpit of a Navy plane. As a teenager growing up in the 1930s, it seemed an impossible dream. There was no such thing as a black fighter pilot and the Navy was not about to accept its first.

But on Sunday, a gray-haired Hodges regaled a small audience with tales of flying bombers during World War II. The slim 83-year-old earned his wings in 1944 with the U.S. Army Air Corps’ all-black combat unit, known as the Tuskegee Airmen. And now those history-making pilots are featured in the California African American Museum’s latest exhibit, “Tuskegee: The Journey to Flight.”

Running until Nov. 1, the exhibit at the museum in Exposition Park will be supplemented by question-and-answer sessions with members of the Tuskegee Airmen, a paper airplane workshop, a theatrical performance and other programs.

Gathering the artifacts to display proved to be a challenge, said Tiffini Bowers, who curated the exhibit along with Dr. Christopher Jimenez Y West. Pilots have passed away and their belongings have been lost; items that are now coveted were not valued in the era of segregation.

“That’s because of the time period it took place,” Bowers said. “People were not of the mind-set that, ‘We need to save this, and this is historic and should be in a museum.’ Some of the Tuskegee Airmen’s efforts were underappreciated.”

Among the relics on display are olive-drab uniforms, giant replicas of squadron badges, pilot logs yellowed with age, and a royal-blue flight simulation plane, known among airmen as “the Blue Box.” Also on hand are original letters between pilot Cecil Peterson and Eleanor Roosevelt, who had been a supporter of the program. “Your letters and gifts have been very inspiring and have prompted me to try to be a better soldier,” Peterson wrote in green ink to the first lady on July 7, 1942.

Museum visitors Yvonne Pope, 37, and Michael Lockett, 36, said they were inspired after seeing the stories of the thousands who trained at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. The couple, on a weekend getaway from Sacramento, had stopped by the museum and browsed the exhibit for an hour before starting the drive back home.

Pope said the displays made her proud of her African American heritage and noted that the Tuskegee Airmen were not in her history books.

“It’s really profound,” she said. “You never see these pictures and it’s not spoken of that often.”

Lockett added, “It’s like the hidden truth.”

When 2nd Lt. Hodges entered the dimly lit room—decades after he had first dreamed of becoming a pilot—he leaned heavily on his cane and surveyed the model airplanes hanging from the ceiling, the giant black-and-white photos on the walls and the flat-screen TVs continuously playing documentaries.

“This is rather nice,” he said, slowly making his way to a photo of a group of pilots who received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest expression of national appreciation awarded by Congress.

Now a Los Angeles resident with 16 great-grandchildren, Hodges has outlived many of his comrades. Such a tribute, he said, was long overdue.

6249: Mission Accomplished…?

From The Washington Post…

‘We’ve Completed Our Mission’
Little Rock Nine, Tuskegee Airmen Receive Invitations to Witness the Fruits of Their Struggle

By Avis Thomas-Lester and Michael E. Ruane
Washington Post Staff Writers

In their youth, they helped build the road to freedom, through white mobs at a segregated high school in Little Rock and across the deadly skies above war-torn Europe.

Next month, the now-aging civil-rights pioneers of the Little Rock Nine and the Tuskegee Airmen will have the opportunity to stand at a high place on that road: the swearing-in of Barack Obama, the first black president of the United States and the country’s first black commander in chief.

Officials said yesterday that invitations were being extended to the nine people who as teenagers desegregated Little Rock’s Central High School in 1957. Invitations to the Tuskegee Airmen, the famed African American pilots and crews who fought during World War II, were announced earlier in the week.

“That we would be invited is only natural because of the pivotal role we played in starting the integration movement,” retired Lt. William Broadwater, 82, of Upper Marlboro said of his fellow black pilots and support personnel, who pushed for military integration a decade before public schools and transportation were desegregated.

“The culmination of our efforts and others’ was this great prize we were given on Nov. 4,” he said. “Now we feel like we’ve completed our mission. This inauguration will be the ultimate result.”

The invitations were offered by the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, which is coordinating the swearing-in at the west front of the Capitol. U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), who suggested the Little Rock invitation, said: “The Little Rock Nine changed the course of American history. … They should be here, front and center.”

But not all the invitees will be able to attend. Little Rock Nine member Elizabeth Eckford, 67, who still lives in the house where she grew up, said she can’t afford the trip.

“I never thought I’d see it, because racism is so much a part of America,” she said. “That will continue to live as long as racism is taught at home.”

Many of the airmen are infirm. Lt. Col. Hiram Mann, 87, of Titusville, Fla., who uses a wheelchair, said he won’t be able to come to the inauguration but will be rooted in front of his television.

“The last two times I have come to Washington, D.C., for events, it has been difficult,” he said. “I’d rather watch it at home where I can be comfortable, but I’m so proud that we were invited.”

Eckford was one of the nine black teenagers who braved enraged white mobs, the National Guard and the hostile governor of Arkansas to attend the then-all white high school three years after the Supreme Court declared segregated schools illegal.

The black students were harassed and hounded by white students and parents, and their struggle made headlines around the world. Minnijean Brown-Trickey, 67, of Little Rock. “I was scared to death,” she said yesterday. “We didn’t cry. Not a single one of us cried. Publicly.”

The invitation is “an indication that [there is] a sense of what came before and how the preparation was made for [Obama], half a century ago or even longer,” she said. “It’s been a centuries-old struggle, and we’re still doing it in some ways.

“This is about a struggle since before the beginning of the nation,” she added. “Whether this is the end of the struggle or the beginning of other struggles” is not clear, she said.

Brown-Trickey said that in the past she “never had any interest in any inauguration, ever. It didn’t seem as if it had anything to do with me.” But Obama’s election is “very powerful stuff,” she said. “We’ve got a black woman who’s going to be first lady. … It’s fabulous.”
She was already planning to attend the inauguration, she said, but “I’d love a better seat.”

Carlotta Walls LaNier, another member of the Little Rock Nine, said: “This is such a wonderful, historical event. … We’ve come a long way in 51 years.”

The Tuskegee Airmen were made up of the 900 black fighter and bomber pilots who trained at the segregated Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama from 1942 through 1946. More than 400 served overseas, flying patrol and strafing missions and serving as bomber escorts from bases in North Africa and Italy.

Ground and support crews, also part of the group, were trained at Tuskegee and elsewhere, and all were assigned to exclusively black aviation units that went overseas to fight, despite harsh discrimination.

In a previous interview, retired Lt. Col. Charles McGee of Bethesda summed up what several members of the Tuskegee Airmen said was their goal: “to be measured by our abilities rather than the happenstance of birth.”

Accomplishing that, Mann, Broadwater and others said, paved the way for Obama.

“I believe the record shows you don’t have to change the standards, you don’t have to do something special. You just have to give everybody opportunity,” McGee said previously. “If we have the chance, we prove ourselves.”

Tuskegee Airman and retired Lt. Col. Lee A. Archer Jr., 89, of New Rochelle, N.Y., said, “This whole thing has given me faith in the young, including the young whites, who seem to have put race aside … to vote for the man who will really bring the change that we need.

“I knew it would happen someday,” said Archer, who flew 169 combat missions and was the only African American designated an ace during the war. “But I thought it might still be 100 years away.”

6239: Tuskegee Airmen Fly To Inauguration.

From The New York Times…

Inauguration Is a Culmination for Black Airmen

By Katharine Q. Seelye

When the Tuskegee Airmen, the all-black force of elite pilots, emerged from combat in World War II, they faced as much discrimination as they had before the war. It was not until six decades later that their valor was recognized and they received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor Congress can give.

Now, the roughly 330 pilots and members of the ground crew who are left from about 16,000 who served are receiving another honor that has surpassed their dreams: They are being invited to watch the inauguration of Barack Obama as the country’s first black president.

“I didn’t believe I’d live long enough to see something like this,” said Lt. Col. Charles A. Lane Jr., 83, of Omaha, a retired Tuskegee fighter pilot who flew missions over Italy.

“I would love to be there, I would love to be able to see it with my own eyes,” he said, chuckling on the phone as he heard about the invitation. But, he said, he had a “physical limitation” and was not sure he would be able to attend.

Thousands of people who participated in the fight for civil rights over several decades helped pave the way for Mr. Obama’s triumph. But the Tuskegee Airmen have a special place in history. Their bravery during the war — on behalf of a country that actively discriminated against them — helped persuade President Harry S. Truman to desegregate the military in 1948.

“The election of Barack Obama was like a culmination of a struggle that we were going through, wanting to be pilots,” said William M. Wheeler, 85, a retired Tuskegee combat fighter pilot who lives in Hempstead, N.Y. He tried to become a commercial pilot after the war but was offered a job cleaning planes instead.

Mr. Obama has acknowledged his debt to the airmen, issuing a statement in 2007, when they received the Congressional Gold Medal. It said in part: “My career in public service was made possible by the path heroes like the Tuskegee Airmen trail-blazed.”

The invitation to his swearing-in was extended Tuesday by Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who is chairwoman of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies.

Howard Gantman, staff director for the committee, said of the decision to invite them: “They served honorably on behalf of our country, helped fight the battle to overcome racial barriers and because of the historic nature of this election, we thought they deserved to be there.”

Tickets to the Jan. 20 inauguration are the most sought-after commodity, with more than 1.5 million people expected in Washington. Of the 240,000 tickets, the airmen would have seats among the 30,000 on the terrace below the podium, along with former members of Congress and others.

For logistical reasons, the actual invitation ended up with Robert D. Rose, a retired Air Force captain in Bellevue, Neb., who was not a Tuskegee airman but is the first vice president of the Tuskegee Airmen Inc., an association of the original airmen and their supporters.

The onus is on the association to extend the invitation to the airmen, who must respond by Dec. 19. Each can bring one guest. The tickets are not transferable, so if an airman cannot make it, he cannot give his ticket away.

“We’ll have a lot of happy fellows and ladies,” said Mr. Rose, who predicted that many would try to attend.

He said that before the invitation was made Tuesday, he had already been trying to get word to higher ups that the airmen would like to be invited. “I thought if the name ‘Tuskegee’ surfaced at a high enough level, someone would recognize it and it would make sense to invite them,” he said.

There is no firm handle on how many are still alive. More than 300 came forward in March 2007 to collect their bronze replicas of the Congressional Gold Medal at a ceremony at the Capitol. The actual Gold Medal itself was given to the Smithsonian Institution.

In all, 994 pilots and about 15,000 ground personnel collectively known as the Tuskegee Airmen were trained at the segregated Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama from 1942 to 1946.

About 119 pilots and 211 ground personnel are still alive, according to Tuskegee Airmen Inc. They are in their 80s and 90s, many are frail, and it is unclear how many will be able to make the trip to Washington. And those who make it will face various challenges: they will most likely have to walk some distance, the weather could be harsh, the crowds will be huge and accommodations are scarce.

Still, these are some of the airmen who flew more than 150,000 sorties over Europe and North Africa during World War II, escorting Allied bombers and destroying hundreds of enemy aircraft. Some were taken prisoner. And most faced fierce discrimination during and after the war.

“Even the Nazis asked why they would fight for a country that treated them unfairly,” President Bush said in awarding the medals.

Mr. Rose, of the airmen’s association, said he saw a direct connection between the Tuskegee experience and Mr. Obama’s election.

“The Tuskegee Airmen preceded Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, and if they hadn’t helped generate a climate of tolerance by integration of the military, we might not have progressed through the civil rights era,” he said. ”We would have seen a different civil rights movement, if we would have seen one at all.”