Black Aviators Celebrate Their Rich History

Edward Gibbs had the right stuff. He just didn’t have the right skin color.

Gibbs, a black aviator, trained black pilots during World War II. But after the war, he and other blacks were unable to get jobs in the aviation industry.

“It was devastating, really,” said Gibbs’ widow, Dicy Gibbs. “World War II was the war that was supposed to give freedom to everyone, and then we discovered that we didn’t have it.”

In an effort to open aviation’s doors to blacks, Gibbs founded Negro Airmen International in 1967. He died in 1973; his wife, from Westbury, N.Y., is being honored during the group’s 25th anniversary this weekend.

Gibbs, an instructor at Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute, trained the first black pilots who flew in the segregated 332nd Bomber Group and 99th Pursuit Squadron during World War II, NAI President Les Morris said Friday.

The training at the black college “was called the Tuskegee Experiment because (society was) trying to prove that blacks couldn’t fly. Then they found they could.”

Morris, of Ledgewood, N.J., said the 99th Pursuit Squadron had a perfect record--none of the bombers it escorted were shot down.