Commissioner Harold Webb Honored with Tuskegee Airmen
A fierce desire to achieve
About 400 Tuskegee Airmen will receive the Congressional Gold Medal today. They had two wars to fight: U.S. enemies abroad and racism at home
They entered World War II through 1940s Alabama, when even black soldiers had to sit in the colored section of the local movie theaters, and nobody expected them to thrive as pilots. The Tuskegee Airmen drew eager young black men, such as Wake County Commissioner Harold Webb, who spent two years fixing planes for white pilots before he even saw a black flier -- let alone a black officer.
"A lot of people didn't believe African-Americans could fly," said Webb, 81. "We were fighting two wars. We were fighting segregation, and we were fighting the Nazis."
Today, President Bush and U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will present the Congressional Gold Medal, one of the nation's highest civilian honors, to about 400 men who trained and fought in that celebrated squadron. Some of them are from the Triangle.
More than 900 airmen passed through Tuskegee Army Airfield from 1942 to 1946, many of whom flew 15,000 sorties over North Africa and Europe and destroying more than 400 enemy planes.
Harold Webb, 81
Webb started his flying career at the controls of a Piper Cub, part of a government program to train black college students as civilian pilots.
Drafted in 1943, Webb went to Wichita Falls, Texas, as a mechanic for white pilots. It wasn't until two years later that Webb, still a mechanic, first saw black officers: Tuskegee Airmen flying P-51 Mustangs.
"That motivated me to do something else," said Webb, a retired teacher and administrator, now a Wake commissioner.
He recalls slogging through classes on physics, flight theory and aircraft identification in 1945, seeing fellow pilots leave for missions over Italy as he trained on twin-engine planes. "What we did led to integration," he said.
