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excerpt
from 1st Lt. Calvin Spann’s Oral History: None of this
material can be reproduced in print or electronically without the
express permission of the Army Air Forces Historical Association.
......When I got to Biloxi, Mississippi, they said, we don't
train any black cadets here. They
put me up in the GI housing and they didn't give me a uniform for two
weeks. Then the orders came through sending me on to Tuskegee,
Alabama where they were training black cadets.
This was all brand new to me because I had never been out of the
state of New Jersey prior to that and I didn't know anything about the
segregation polices of the Air Force. CVA:
Was prejudice in the South more pronounced than in the North? CJS:
I got a very shocking surprise on the train going down. In those days you traveled by train and Pullman car.
They gave me a meal in the Pullman car because it was an
overnight trip, but during the day you go into the dining car to eat.
I guess you know that during that time the waiters and Pullman
conductors and Pullman porters were all black.
So on the way down we were just a little way out of Washington,
DC., they pulled me aside and said, "Look when you go in the dining
car to eat we're going to pull the shade because sometime our train has
to stop and go on the siding so that the Northbound train, which uses
the same track, could pass. And
we don't want anybody taking a shot at you."
That was my first shock and the other shock was when I got down
to Keesler Field in Biloxi, Mississippi, to find out that the Air Force
was a segregated unit and there was no training at that particular base
for black cadets
Evidently the people operating the service at Newark weren't
aware that I was Black because they just filed my papers.
Here's a guy who passed the test.
I don't remember whether it had race, color or anything on the
application. But they
treated me like any other applicant would be treated and they got me in
that mess. But it was my
introduction to the race issue and segregation. © Copyright 1995 Army Air Forces Historical Association
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1st
Lt. Calvin J. Spann, USAAF
