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• Roger "Bill" Terry Remembers
• Tuskegee Airman, Inc.
• Article on war aces

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Tavis: This year, we commemorate the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II, and I am honored tonight, honored, to be joined by 2 members of the famed Tuskegee Airmen. Lowell C. Steward was a member of the 332nd unit known as the Red Tails, and Roger "Bill" Terry is a former president of the Tuskegee Airmen. I am delighted to have you both. Nice to see you.

Roger 'Bill' Terry: Thank you.

Lowell C. Steward: Thank you.

Tavis: Glad to have you here. You two have--we were just talking before we came on camera, and you two have known each other for a few years, haven't you?

Terry: Yes, we have.

Tavis: 60...

Steward: 65 about.

Terry: You were in high school, weren't you, when I met you?

Steward: No. I was in junior college.

Terry: Junior college. OK. Well, all right.

Steward: He was at Compton, and I was at L.A.

Terry: Yeah.

Tavis: 65 years. We were just talking on the set, before we came on camera here, about some of the people that you all knew. So let me just throw a few names out. Chappy James.

Steward: Yes, he was my classmate.

Tavis: Chappy James was your classmate?

Steward: 4-star general.

Tavis: Yes, and your classmate.

Steward: Right.

Tavis: And you played basketball with a fellow named Jackie Roosevelt Robinson.

Terry: That's right. He was good.

Tavis: Yeah. Ha ha ha! That's gotta be the line of the year. "He was good." Oh, yeah. He was awfully good. Tell me--there's so many things to talk about in the time I have for you. Let me start with this very simple question. You first, Roger Terry. Why did you want to be in the armed forces? What was the armed forces--you know, for those young persons watching that don't know the story or don't recall the story of the courageousness of the Tuskegee Airmen, the armed forces were segregated, completely segregated. Why did you want to do this?

Terry: Well, you understand that there was a war going on, and you didn't have much choice. You would be drafted or you would join. And I assumed that I would rather fly an airplane than to walk on the ground. And so, therefore, I joined. However, I wasn't aware of the fact of segregation and what it would do to me as an individual and to the rest of the people like me.

Tavis: Mr. Steward, why did you want to join the armed forces to begin with?

Steward: Well, it's quite simple. I was the captain of the basketball team at Santa Barbara, and Pearl Harbor happened. And the basketball team decided to volunteer to join the air force. So I was the captain and the only black on the team. And we went down to the recruiting office and volunteered our services. They refused to take me.

Tavis: Let me just guess. I bet they didn't refuse to take the rest of your white teammates.

Steward: You made a good guess. They took the 4 white boys. They told me go back to Los Angeles. "We don't know what to do with you." At that time there were no separate units that were integrated. All the units were all white or all black. And the army had a policy that blacks could not fly an airplane because their cranium was smaller than a white boy's and therefore they couldn't figure out problems. So the policy of the armed services was that blacks would be segregated into meaningless squadrons--clean up the yard and pick up cigarette butts.

Tavis: And so there are 2 issues here. One: they kept the squadrons and the units separated by race, number one. But then, on top of that, Roger Terry, what Mr. Steward is telling us is that they did not believe that black men or women had the capacity to fly an airplane to begin with. Now, tell me, you obviously went on to fly any number of missions, but tell me what you thought then of the notion that Negr...s just didn't have what it took to fly an airplane.

Terry: Well, you see--

Tavis: I mean, it sounds stupid these days.

Terry: Well, you see, it was different with me. I joined the air force when they said the Bruin squadron will get students from UCLA. And I took the examination, and I think about 500 of us passed it. We went up to March Field, and about 400 of us passed it, and it was time to swear us in. And so the colonel said we'll take you and Teddy Forbes, who was the captain of the football team. So Bruin athletes joined the air force. So they swore me in. And so 3 days later, he called me, and he said, "Why didn't you tell us you were colored?" And I said, "You didn't ask me." He said, "Well, go on home, and we'll see what happens." And so, 2 days, 3 days later, got our letter from the army saying you're too big and you weigh too much. Well, I was 172 pounds and 6-foot-3.

Tavis: Not that you were too black, but you were too big and you weighed too much.

Terry: Yeah. And so I went home, and about 3 weeks later, I got a telephone call. It was a man from Tuskegee. He said if you'll come here and, uh--we'll teach you to fly, and we'll make an instructor out of you.

Tavis: Mr. Steward, tell me more--pick up on this story--tell me more, then, about the heroics of the Tuskegee Airmen.

Steward: Well, we have a reputation of never having lost a bomber that we escorted.

Tavis: Mm-hmm.

Steward: We followed instructions according to Colonel Davis. He said, "Stay with the bombers." So we stayed with the bombers where they could see us. And the German fighters could see that we were protecting the bombers close, so they never fired at them. If we were protecting the lead flight of the bombers, they would attack the rear. If we were escorting the rear, they would attack the head. And that way, we never had many confrontations with German pilots.

Tavis: We sit here tonight, Roger Terry, obviously, in African-American history month, or black history month, 2005. I wonder whether or not, although you knew the--the value of the work that you were doing as American servicemen, I wonder whether or not you all ever thought about, ever sat around and talked about the fact that what you were doing then was history-making. We celebrate your contributions today, but as young men, did that thought ever enter your minds, what you all were really doing?

Terry: No, it didn't enter our mind, but what did enter our mind was the unfairness of it.

Tavis: Mm-hmm.

Terry: And the segregation, and it bothered me, especially. And, uh, I think that all of the fellows had a similar circumstance, and it turned out that, uh, we definitely had to take a stand on segregation and discrimination, and when the president promulgated 210-10, paragraph "A" and "B," which was an executive order against segregation in the recreational facilities on any air force base or any army, navy base, uh, we thought we had a chance to do something about it. And so--so came about the Freeman Field incident--

Tavis: I'm glad you said that. I was just about to go there. I am from Indiana.

Steward and Terry: Mm-hmm.

Tavis: Raised there. Went to school there. Graduate of Indiana University. So Indiana's my home state. My mama's watching us, as are my siblings watching us right now in Indiana, and I remember learning about this as a child growing up in Indiana: the Freeman Field incident. You were involved in that and were arrested then. Let me ask you to tell me the short story for those who have never heard about the Freeman Field incident that happened, shamefully, in my home state of Indiana. Tell me what happened and your involvement in that incident.

Terry: Well, when we got there, we set up a table. We screened everybody, make sure they were properly dressed and they were--nothing was out of order, and sent them 3 by 3 down to the officers' club to either get admitted or to get rejected.

Tavis: These are black soldiers who you're sending down to the officers' club that would not admit African-Americans.

Terry: That's right.

Tavis: Go ahead.

Terry: And so when it was number 60 or 61, it was my turn. So I went, and when I got down there, they said, "You can't come in." I said, "Why?" He said, uh, "You're trainees, and all the rest of the people were supervisors." And I said, "I belong to the base squadron." And the guy said, "Well, to be frank with you," he said, "No niggers allowed." So I went around him and went into the officers' club, and an officer, a major, he placed me under arrest. I thought that perhaps maybe that was the end of it. Well, uh, we had a fellow. His name was Bill Parker. His mother worked in the White House, and she was a friend of Eleanor's, and Eleanor belonged to Franklin. And we thought if Bill Parker got to his mother, she got to Eleanor, Eleanor got to Franklin, he'd say, "Let my people free." But it didn't happen that way because he died subsequently, and we got Truman. And, of course, we were quite upset about that because of the fact that we didn't know where he stood. But he turned out to be a very good man.

Tavis: You moved past that story right quick, and my time is just about up, but you were arrested for jostling, as they call it--

Terry: That's right.

Tavis: Trying to get into the officers' club as an African-American. You were on record a convicted felon, as a result of that, for 50 years.

Terry: That's right.

Tavis: And in 1995, what happened?

Terry: Well, uh, Rodney Coleman, he was the spearhead of it, and, um...the head of the air force was there. His secretary was there, and, uh, he said, uh--he had something to say, and he said, uh...that 14 people would be adjusted. And so he named all the people, and he handed out the papers, and mine wasn't there. So I felt awfully bad about it. I said, "Oh, god, they forgot about me." But I didn't--but then Rodney Coleman said a great injustice has been done to this man, and he gave me a pardon, and the pardon was from the Secretary of the Air Force. And I tell you, I was so excited, I spilled water all over the chief of staff. And then I looked around to see where my wife was, and, finally, I found her and had her come up. And they asked me to say something, and I couldn't say anything. Because of the fact that we had been vindicated, it told me that after 50 years, after 70 years, after 100 years, if you're right, you can be vindicated because we're a nation of laws.

Tavis: This is Black History Month. Dr. King put it this way: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." I can talk to these gentlemen for hours, but this seems a perfect note on which to end this conversation because truth did prevail. Righteousness and justice did prevail in the end. These gentlemen are authentic American her...s. You all saw the Super Bowl and saw that wonderful, um...occasion that Michael Douglas spearheaded that celebrated the troops that served this country so well. But I wanted you, tonight, to meet 2 of those Tuskegee Airmen who deserve our respect and love for time eternal. So I'm delighted to meet both of you and glad to have you on the program.

Terry: Thank you very much.

Tavis: All the best to you.