Red Tails

This month sees the release of the George Lucas blockbuster movie Red Tails starring Cuba Gooding, Jr. The movie is based on the true story of the Tuskegee Airmen. The airmen belonged to the United States’ first African American division of the Army Air Corps formed in 1941. The segregated unit came into existence after African Americans protested their exclusion from the US military as fighter pilots. The Tuskegee 332nd Fighter Group were known as the Red Tails because of the distinctive red tails on the P-51 planes that they flew. The Tuskegee Airmen served with distinction and in 2007 they collectively received the Congressional Gold Medal. A number of African American Arkansans were Tuskegee Airmen and two of them, Woodrow W. Crockett of Texarkana, and William T. Mattison of Conway, were Red Tails. I’m John Kirk of the UALR History Department and this has been an Arkansas moment.