Eleanor Roosevelt's Flight With The First Black Aviators : The Picture Show : NPR: Seventy years ago, in March of 1941, first lady Eleanor Roosevelt hopped in the back of pilot C. Alfred 'Chief' Anderson's plane at the Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama and went for a flight. OK, it wasn't quite that casual; the event was actually a pretty big deal — because Anderson was black.
The first lady's visit marked the initiation of the U.S. Army's African-American pilot program and the activation of the first all-African American military aviation unit: the 99th Pursuit Squadron. Later named the Fighter Squadron, it became the first squadron of black pilots to fight in World War II in the skies over Pantelleria, an island near Sicily, on June 2, 1943.
