Field Where Tuskegee Airmen Trained Named National Historic Site: Lt. Col. John Mulzac stood on the asphalt at Moton Field Friday the same grounds where he trained decades ago to become one of the country's first Black military pilots and wept.
Mulzac and hundreds of his fellow servicemen, an all-Black group of pilots referred to as the Tuskegee Airmen, and their families and friends, reunited at the Alabama field where the men trained for World War II. Their role in the war eventually led to desegregation in the U.S. armed forces. The field was named a National Historic Site.
'When I think about what we went through, this just brings tears to my eyes,' said Mulzac, 84.
Thousands of people from across the country attended the opening ceremony Friday afternoon, which launched a weekend of festivities celebrating the fruition of a dream turned reality.
The airmen fought Adolf Hitler overseas and segregation and prejudice on American soil, being degraded as second-class citizens and watching as German prisoners of war were treated better than them.
At first called the 'Tuskegee Experiment,' the first aviation cadet class began in July 1941 with 13 students at the Tuskegee Army Air Field, about 40 miles east of Montgomery. Black people weren't allowed to fly in the military at the time, and the 'experiment' was to see whether they could pilot airplanes and handle heavy machinery.
