At the beginning of World War II, blacks were not allowed to serve as pilots in the military. A 1925 U.S. Army War College report had gone so far as deeming them not just inferior, but also incapable of operating complex machinery. But the country desperately needed more pilots. So a small training program for black pilots was initiated at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. It was called the Tuskegee Experiment because the Air Corps brass fully expected the men in the program—many of whom were college-educated and quite accomplished—to fail. Some of the early white instructors in the program, in fact, tried to make sure that outcome came to pass. All of the instructors were volunteers,Now, some of them volunteered because they believed in the program. But others volunteered to try to keep us from succeeding. they tryed all kinds of things to provoke us into getting angry, or coming back at them. Because the minute you did that, you washed out.
