San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Cherish our living links to the past
They made their way through the world by sky, road and rail, segregated travelers denied access by their nation to broader and more traditional routes.
So the Tuskegee Airmen flew overseas to defend countrymen and -women who wouldn’t defend them here at home; the Negro League players rode in cars and buses, from town to town, to play games where only the ball was white; and Pullman porters served white passengers in railroad sleeping cars where Black people weren’t allowed.
Nearly 1,000 pilots were trained in the program, and they became legends, losing just 25 planes on 1,500 escort missions.
Tuskegee Airmen refers not only to the pilots but to the support group of mechanics, instructors, nurses, cooks, etc.
“They did things for their country that their country didn’t want them to do,” said Rick Sinkfield, president of the San Antonio Chapter-Tuskegee Airmen Inc. “They were there to prove that they could do the job, that it has nothing to do with race or color. If you’re going to bring it, bring it strong. And they did.”
The Negro League was formed in 1920 because Major League Baseball had placed a barrier that wouldn’t be hurdled until Jackie Robinson made the leap in Ebbets Field in 1947.
Up until then, scores of Black professional baseball players had the light of their talent hidden under the bushel of racism, Black diamonds lost in the rough of ignorance and injustice.
But if they were unknown to most of white America, they were heroes to Black America — mythic figures whose exploits became part of Black folklore.
Was Satchel Paige’s fastball not detectable to the human eye?
Was Cool Papa Bell truly so fast he could turn the lights out and be in bed before the room got dark? Or that he once batted a ball and was hit by the line drive as he rounded first base?
It’s said Josh Gibson hit a ball out of Forbes Field in Pittsburgh that disappeared, and then the next day, during a game in Philadelphia, a ball mysteriously dropped out of the sky into an outfielder’s glove, causing an umpire to point at Gibson and say, “You’re out! Yesterday in Pittsburgh.”
For Black fans, Negro League ballgames weren’t simply athletic contests but social affairs and communal gatherings to which they wore their best clothes. Weekend games drew 5,000 to 10,000 fans.
Players took the field after grueling journeys, covering thousands of miles along dusty and solitary back roads fueled by the “Dutch Lunches” they carried with them — boxes of bread, lunch meat, ham, tomatoes and sandwich spread, or Mason jars of crackers and sardines.
Pullman porters became the job of Black men because after George Pullman introduced his railroad sleeping cars after the Civil War, he figured ex-slaves would be the best porters — they’d work long hours for low pay and knew how to please white people.
In the early years of the 20th century, the Pullman Co. was the largest employer of Black men in the country. The porters were often humiliated, called “boy” or “George” or worse, but their salaries helped create a Black middle class. Because of their constant travel, they also served as reporters, carrying news about political and cultural happenings from one part of the country to another.
Recently, there was an hourlong, 100-vehicle procession on the Northwest side of San Antonio honoring the 100th birthday of retired Air Force Senior Master Sgt. James Bynum, a Tuskegee Airman. In the same section of the newspaper as Express-News reporter Vincent T. Davis’ column of the celebration was an article on the death of another Tuskegee Airman, Ted Lumpkins Jr. of Los Angeles, who was also 100.
Bynum and Dr. Eugene Derricotte are San Antonio’s only surviving Tuskegee Airmen.
There are only a handful of them still living across the country.
Rare is the African American who hasn’t known someone who flew as a Tuskegee Airman, rode the buses in the Negro Leagues or worked the rails as a Pullman porter. Although women were part of the Tuskegee Airmen support group and three women played in the Negro League, these were jobs exclusively associated with Black men.
Many of us knew people who represented each of those jobs. John “Mule” Miles was a Tuskegee Airman and a Negro League player.
They were our neighbors, church members and family. But the time is coming, very soon, when there will no longer be living Black men who were Tuskegee Airmen, Negro League players or Pullman porters.
“They’re a link to the past,” Sinkfield said of the Tuskegee Airmen, which also can be said of the baseball players and porters. “They sent forth a legacy of what we should be about. What they did was timeless.”