Reagan Honored the Tuskegee Airmen

My column today looks back at Ronald Reagan’s service in the Second World War as part of the First Motion Picture Unit in Culver City, Calif. Here’s another fascinating artifact of that period: Wings for This Man, a film produced near the end of the war, narrated by Reagan, touting the heroism of the Tuskegee Airmen — the all-black squadron that distinguished itself during the war, flying in the Army Air Force when the Army was still racially segregated (as it had been since Woodrow Wilson).

In the film, Reagan praises the airmen for overcoming prejudice: “you can’t judge a man here by the color of his eyes or the shape of his nose; on the flight strip, you judge a man by the way he flies.” This was many years before it was fashionable to acknowledge the role of black servicemen. Speaking at Tuskegee University in 1987, Reagan recalled:

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Dan McLaughlin

Dan McLaughlin is a senior writer at National Review Online and a fellow at National Review Institute.

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My column today looks back at Ronald Reagan’s service in the Second World War as part of the First Motion Picture Unit in Culver City, Calif. Here’s another fascinating artifact of that period: Wings for This Man, a film produced near the end of the war, narrated by Reagan, touting the heroism of the Tuskegee Airmen — the all-black squadron that distinguished itself during the war, flying in the Army Air Force when the Army was still racially segregated (as it had been since Woodrow Wilson).

In the film, Reagan praises the airmen for overcoming prejudice: “you can’t judge a man here by the color of his eyes or the shape of his nose; on the flight strip, you judge a man by the way he flies.” This was many years before it was fashionable to acknowledge the role of black servicemen. Speaking at Tuskegee University in 1987, Reagan recalled: