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CORTLANDT, N.Y. They were a group of young African-American men who were given little respect when they began flight training during World War II but wound up playing a pivotal role in the success of the Allies and, more importantly, ended segregation in the military.
"It was a double victory," Quincy Magwood, a retired U.S. Air Force chief master sergeant and a "torch bearer" for the Tuskegee Airmen, told members of the Van Cortlandtville Historical Society during a program at the Little Red Schoolhouse.
"What the Tuskegee Airmen proved to the world was America could not afford a black Air Force and a white Air Force," said Magwood, eastern region vice president and a senior member of the Tuskegee Airmen Board of Directors. "What won the war was a combination of the two air forces a combination of America's best."
Of the more than 900 pilots who were part of the Tuskegee Aviation Experiment in Alabama, 45 of them escorted a bombing mission over Austria in 1945 and never lost a bomber that they were protecting. The airmen earned 744 medals and honors for their heroic efforts.
Albert Gaines of Cortlandt was a captain with the Tuskegee Airmen and received an invitation to attend President Barack Obama's inauguration one day after he died in 2008 at age 85. His wife, Viola Baldwin-Gaines; and his daughter, Deborah Yearwood, attended on his behalf.
Baldwin-Gaines recalled her husband being one of the college students who was accepted for the Tuskegee Experiment.
"Thus he became a part of history," she said while receiving a certificate from the historical society, where she serves on the board of directors.
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