Hart of Tuskegee

Dear Greta,

Hoping this letter finds you still thinking about me as when you’re cooking for the girls and cleaning for the Copeland family, this is your dear husband Charles.

So here I am writing to you on this cold night in February of 1943. Nearly two years ago you told me Chuck you are crazy when I told you that I was going to join the military and fulfill my dreams of being a pilot. I used to talk your ear off like crazy about how much I wanted to be a pilot. We would laugh for hours about how I couldn’t stop and how you could never hear enough of me.

Underneath the laughs you knew I was serious when I told you the story of my great grandfather Charles who was a former slave that escaped slavery with the help of an abolitionist and then he joined the union army and fought in the civil war, eventually freeing my great grandmother Marietta. As we’ve discussed before, this is why I’ve always wanted to join the U.S. military, because it’s a part of my bloodline.

Here I am, a Black man from the northern region of America who has become one of the first ever Black pilots fighting for the skies of American. I’ve been here for over a year, yet I still can’t believe it. So here I am again living in the barracks with my fellow Black brothers. I’ve become friends with quite a few of them. I met this one young cat from Missouri named Clifton. His father is actually one of the first Black soldiers that served during the First World War. He told me the whole reason he joined up was similar to my own. He wanted to follow in the noble footsteps of his father.

I met another young brother named Clifton, funny kid. He has a way with humor that lifts our spirits after just getting a ring of bad news. His father actually owns a diner down just outside Montgomery. Not bad for a colored man down south. He also says they get a lot of business. He told me if we make it out of this alive he’ll treat me, you and the girls to a plate of his father’s cooking. I really do hope I see this young brother on the other side.

Someone I think you’d really admire is our Major Wright. He comes from Mississippi like your father, I think maybe Meridian. He also reminds me a lot of your father as well. He’s very serious, but he also has a good sense of humor and he knows how to keep us motivated when I spirits run low. I hate to tell you that the first young brother I met during my first month here, Kevin, unfortunately lost his life during a mechanical failure while we were running drills. Kevin’s death crippled us for days. He was the youngest of us all, but he had the soul of an old man, one who we knew had the potential to be a hero for his people.

Lately me and the rest of the Tuskegee group have been put at unease. In the near two years since we’ve been here our training has advanced, but our priority missions have not. It really seems like they don’t want to give us colored troops a chance to make a real impact. We also face a lot of antagonizing from the White soldiers. It would seem that even in the military the Jim Crow is still alive. I know it’s a little naive of me to think that standing up to fight for my country would make the whites accept us more, but it’s just not that simple.

We are still segregated and still not respected. I know I shouldn’t be surprised that two years of service doesn’t erase 400 years of oppression. I guess this all goes back to what we discussed in the months before I enlisted. We talked about how though I admire both of our families for their service to the military, your father always told you and me that a black man had no place fighting a white man’s war. He said though we may think we’re serving the country, we’re really just serving an agenda in which we would never truly be accepted.

Though I can say I was a bit naive I know that everything your father told me was true, Greta. Even my own father told me that he wasn’t crazy about my enlisting after all the stories my great grandfather told him growing up. I guess I just want to be the one of the black men in this country who want to defy the odds. I know it won’t be easy, but I know it is possible. Yesterday me and the rest of the boys received some surprising news. Something that neither of us saw coming so sudden.

Major Wright came to the barracks and informed us that we would be going on our first official real mission very soon. He never said when exactly and he didn’t even say what, but he did say it would be very soon. This news really made me and the rest of our team really happy. I know it’s not about proving our worth to the whites. It’s about proving to ourselves that we are worth it by being the reason that this war will be one. I’ve been thinking a lot about the Pearl Harbor attack and how Dorie Miller fought back during the attack.

His story inspired me because it showed me that black people are heroes too. We are not worthless, but worth more than anyone else can imagine because we say we are, we know we are. When that fateful day comes that we get to fly into battle I know lives will be loss, possibly mine though I hate to say it. But my dear Greta Marie Hart, I want you to know that if I don’t make it back to you I want you to tell our girls that their father was a fighter and I will die every day fighting for you all just to win this war.

To my dearest Greta.

Love your husband, Charles Hart.