Flight Into Black History

Amid the roar of jets, a single-engine Cessna quietly touched down Saturday at Burbank Airport, commemorating the first transcontinental flight by black pilots 65 years ago.

The Cessna was piloted by two men from Tucson--a veteran and a student--who are among 76 black pilots nationwide participating in a re-creation of the historic flight in which two black men undertook the historic 11-day mission.

The 4,600-mile commemorative journey began last Wednesday at Bader Field in Atlantic City, N.J., and is expected to end Wednesday at Valley Stream, N.Y. Along the way, pilots and postmasters are date-stamping and autographing a cargo of cards which the organizers plan to sell as souvenirs next year.

In July 1933, a New Jersey surgeon, Dr. Albert Forsythe, and another flier who became known as “the father of black aviation,” Charles Alfred “Chief” Anderson, set out to deliver a message: The color of one’s skin has nothing to do with the ability to pilot an aircraft.

They flew to more than 50 airports and landing strips--all that they could find on a Rand McNally road map, their only navigational tool besides a compass and an altimeter--stretching from Atlantic City to Los Angeles and back again.

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“As I was flying, I was really thinking about what a difficult thing that trip was,” said pilot Leslie Morris, a retired airline captain and former air traffic controller, who lives in Green Valley, Ariz.

As president of the newly formed Black Pilots of America, Morris, 62, said he also was hit by the impact of the statement made by his predecessors.

“I was thinking about how hard it was to be doing what they were doing,” Morris said. “To not be accepted anywhere.”

Saturday’s landing at Burbank marked the most westerly leg of the 1933 trip in which Forsythe and Anderson landed at Grand Central Airport in Glendale, now an industrial park. The Mercury Air Center private terminal at Burbank was selected for the commemorative flight.

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Piloting the light plane with Morris was Jon Fearonce, 18, of Tucson, an aviation student at Arizona State University.

Among the greeters were two dozen black aviators, including former members of the Tuskegee Airmen of World War II, the first black military air corps.

The two pilots sat for an autograph session with Glendale Postmaster Andrew J. O’Connell, signing each of the 125 commemorative cards. The cards will be loaded into another small plane this morning for the next leg of the flight to San Francisco and Salt Lake City.

Morris’ 400-member pilots organization includes among its goals an increase in participation of minorities in the field of aviation.

Working in relay fashion, pilots across the country are passing along the cards, which depict a map of the nation and the 22 stops along the commemorative route. Many of the original airfields visited by Forsythe and Anderson, which sometimes included cornfields, no longer exist.

A limited number of the commemorative cards will be reprinted and sold as souvenirs by the U.S. Postal Service during Black History Month in February.

The 1933 transcontinental trip was the first of a series by the pioneering duo, who also were the first blacks to achieve international flights, to Montreal and South America. Yet their names remain relatively obscure in history, outside aviation circles.

“My uncle was quite a pioneer in his day, but he hasn’t had that much recognition,” said Roger Forsythe, a Pasadena physician who was among Saturday’s greeters.