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Colorado leaders honor Tuskegee Airmen with I-70 section naming

By Ed Sealover, Rocky Mountain News

Published August 13, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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John Mosley was in good enough shape to be an all-city football player at Denver's Manual High School in the late 1930s. And he was fit enough to become a member of one of the most decorated groups of airmen in American history.

But in between those honors, the 87-year-old African-American can still remember being rejected from the all-white Reserve Officer Training Corps at Colorado State University.

The reason: Mosley was "physically unqualified."

Times have changed in a big way for Mosley and his fellow barrier-breaking black fighter pilots. On Tuesday, Gov. Bill Ritter and other state leaders honored them by renaming an 11-mile stretch of Interstate 70 the Tuskegee Airmen Memorial Highway, making Colorado just the second state to honor the famed group in such a way.

"We talk a lot about our World War II veterans. We talk a lot about our heroes. But I can't think of any truer heroes," said Assistant House Majority Leader Terrance Carroll, D-Denver, whose resolution created the designation. "They fought for this country when this country wouldn't fight for them."

The U.S. military, still segregated at the start of World War II, trained an all-black unit of airmen at the Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama beginning in 1941. The men from Tuskegee flew combat missions over Europe and North Africa and their success was a prelude to President Harry Truman desegregating the armed forces in 1948.

The 994 pilots who graduated from that training had to jump enormous hurdles even to get into the program.

Randy Edwards, who was in the next-to-last class of airmen, remembered running into plenty of racism at the time and didn't expect to be receiving any monumental honors more than 60 years after the war ended. But the 81-year-old said he hopes the signs recognizing the pilots from Tuskegee can give young black men inspiration to achieve.

Added former airman Buck Newsum, 90: "As we ride on I-70 and look to our right, we will see something that reminds us that it is good to be here."

The boundaries of the highway designation are Brighton Boulevard and Tower Road.

Comments

  • August 17, 2008

    11:37 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    HopiMedicineMan writes:

    I hereby name I-25, border to border, the Navajo Code Talkers Highway.