Front

White ground personnel: I don’t believe you.

Hal: I don’t play games, sir. I’m a lieutenant colonel. Haldane King!

White ground personnel: Well you better watch yourself around here. This ain’t
the North. We never wanted no colored people in our way. Y’all won’t be here for
much longer, you might as well head on home before you regret it.

Hal: *walks away*

*white ground personnel walks off*

Narrator: This is Haldane King. He is a Tuskegee airmen. Tuskegee airmen were a

group of black air force pilots who flew during World War II. It was experiences
like these that defined what it was like to be a black soldier in a segregated
military.

…*Haldane finding water in the gas tank*

Narrator: The Tuskegee airmen faced constant discrimination in the air force.
They would often find water on their gas tanks when replacing them. And if they
didn’t find it, their plane would fail and crash somewhere, possibly in enemy
territory.

Hal: I’m here to fight for my country, just like them. I want to have a family
someday, just like them. So why can’t I have the same rights and opportunities as
them?

*Hal eats in a corner*

Narrator: Being an officer was supposed to give a soldier perks, like spending time
in the officer’s club. Being a black officer mean those perks were taken away. Hal
often had to eat on his plane.

*Hal sits with another tuskegee airman (Gilbert Langford) *

Narrator: But being a tuskegee airman wasn’t all bad, right? In over 200 missions
you lost only 27 bombers to enemy aircraft, much lower than the average of 46.
Weren’t you proud to be part of this group?

Gil: Of course we were proud! And we’ve established some great bonds.

Hal: Old Gil and I are in the same retirement home, we’ve been buds for decades!
But we had to sacrifice a lot. In addition to all of the hardships and danger that all
soldiers faced, we faced potentially life-threatening racism from our own peers,
and if we were captured by the enemy we would have been killed or put in
concentration camps.

Narrator: Was it worth it?

*Hal and Gil look at each other*

*Hal and Gil stand up to receive medals and people come on stage hug,
congratulate, and get signatures.*

Narrator: Haldane received the Congressional Gold Medal nearly six decades after
his time serving our country. He was 85 years old. The Tuskegee airmen are
credited with destroying 261 aircraft while flying 1,578 missions over Italy and
north Africa. And yet, many of Haldane’s fellow airmen died before they could
receive their medals.

*everyone moves further into the background, Hal on stage*

Hal: Where was this 10 years ago? We should have gotten these awards and this
praise when we returned to the U.S. We should have gotten this respect from the
white soldiers fighting on our side. Does this make up for the way our own
country treated us?